Avg 'Tune Up' Warning........Dont!

[jaideeguy]

I've had the free AVG antivirus for 3 yrs and have been mostly satisfied with it and last week, they prompted me to update to the 2011 version and offered a free trial of a new product called 'AVG tune-up' and I stupidly went for it...........promising all kind of benefits and speeding up the whole pc.

Long install and once done, it ran a scan and found over 5,000 problems and suggested that I click 'repair'.....which I did and it proceded to repair them quite fast and prononced my pc as 'tuned up'.

My pc was not faster.....but slower and slowed down even more after a couple of days until it finally crashed and refused to reboot. It took a complete reinstall of my XP.....loosing lots of programs etc in the process

I can't say for sure that AVG tune up was the problem, but it seems highly likely and I'm posting this as a warning and to see if others have had same problem??

[longball53098]

All I know is I scrapped the free AVG and switched to Avira. My PC's (2) run much better

[BoonToong]

I have heard people praise and recommend AVG for a couple of years now. I tried it once on a work PC and didn't like it.

I have been using Macafee for about 10 years (recommended by my son who is in the IT industry) and I have NEVER had a problem, either with viruses or with the speed of my machine.

Hope this helps.

[Xircal]

All I know is I scrapped the free AVG and switched to Avira. My PC's (2) run much better

I switched to Avira as well (the freebie version) until the updater stopped working. I've now installed the free version of Avast which seems to run just fine.

The main problem I had with AVG was that it identified all the pictures I'd taken with my Panasonic FX-35 camera as being infected with a virus. When that warning screen pops up, there's no "Ignore" button which is ridiculous. Neither Avira or Avast finds anything wrong with my pictures needless to say.

Bit late now, but could the OP not get to the Windows Advanced Menu by hitting F8 before the OS loaded? There's a menu option in there called "Last Known Good Configeration". Choosing that will load Windows the last time it worked properly. Doesn't always work, but worth a try.

[Xircal]

I've just read on a security site that an update AVG released has crippled 64 bit versions of Windows 7.

Does the OP have Windows 7 in that flavour installed? If so, the problem may not have been due to the tuneup utility, but rather to the flawed update.

[jaideeguy]

Yeah, tried 'last known good configuration' but didn't work

and I did have a [legit] version of XPpro64bit, but changed to a non legit 32 bit version.

Now running free avira antivirus.

[astral]

Avira has caused me a lot of grief over the last month.

[CharlieH]

I ran the FREE AVG for years but started getting problems over the last 12 months, scrapped them, and use AVAST which is free and appears to be doing fine and machine is much quicker.

[cdnvic]

People still use this piece of crap when so many free (and even better paid for) alternatives exist? Avast, and Avira have superior detection rates, and actually catch worms.Look around and don't be seduced by the word "free".

[octagon]

I ran the FREE AVG for years but started getting problems over the last 12 months, scrapped them, and use AVAST which is free and appears to be doing fine and machine is much quicker.

Yeah, the free AVG was running fine on my friend's computer for the last 18 months or so, but it eventually led to his machine not being able to boot. He needed a complete reinstall of Windows. I put on the free Avast for him, and it's been working flawlessly. I like how you can right click the tray icon and choose to disable the shields control for 10 minutes or an hour. This is useful when opening something you know isn't a virus.

[nocturn]

thankfully i have 2 x64 machines, one running avg one avast.

the avg one behaved exactly as described and required a roll back to the most recent restore point.

had i not had another pc and found the post, id be going nuts. big thanks.

[SurfRider]

.

I recently bought a new PC that hat Avira installed. It kept prompting me to update, but every attempt at an update failed.

I finally got disgusted with it and uninstalled Avira and installed the latest AVG, which I had already been using for a couple of years on two other PCs. It found *MANY* problems that Avira had apparently missed or ignored and fixed them,

I opted for its one-time-only "tune-up" deal and it also found many problems and fixed them. I then un-installed the tune-up app because I didn't want to be constantly prompted to update and/or buy it.

After that, several times per day, AVG flagged some Trojan attempting to write to the protected "System Volume Information" directory and recommended quarantining the Trojan, which I did. The constant attempts to install a Trojan were annoying, to say the least.

I then installed Spybot, which I have used for years. It also found *MANY* additional problems ( trojans, malware, etc. ) and recommended allowing Spybot to boot in safe-mode and attempt to fix the problems. It ran for over an hour, prompted to remove several varmints, and finally pronounced the PC safe.

The AVG Trojan warnings several times per day have disappeared since Spybot apparently killed whatever was causing that.

Avira was problematic and is gone and I'm happy for that. AVG and Spybot appear to be doing a good job, as they always have in the past on other PCs. The new PC is super-fast and apparently problem free.

Clearly, different people have different unexplainable experiences with Avira and AVG as well as other protective software.

.

Edited December 5, 2010 by SurfRider

[xen]

I've had the free AVG antivirus for 3 yrs and have been mostly satisfied with it and last week, they prompted me to update to the 2011 version and offered a free trial of a new product called 'AVG tune-up' and I stupidly went for it...........promising all kind of benefits and speeding up the whole pc.

Long install and once done, it ran a scan and found over 5,000 problems and suggested that I click 'repair'.....which I did and it proceded to repair them quite fast and prononced my pc as 'tuned up'.

My pc was not faster.....but slower and slowed down even more after a couple of days until it finally crashed and refused to reboot. It took a complete reinstall of my XP.....loosing lots of programs etc in the process

I can't say for sure that AVG tune up was the problem, but it seems highly likely and I'm posting this as a warning and to see if others have had same problem??

Wish I had read this about 2 weeks ago. This is exactly what i did downloading AVG 2011 and AVG tune-up and it started to run slower & slower until i did a re-boot and that was it . I assumed the cpu had burnt out so i went out and bought a new tower. It was about time i upgraded as my tower was about 7 years old .Yes i would agree with you that it was AVG tune up. Never again AVG.

[selftaopath]

thankfully i have 2 x64 machines, one running avg one avast.

the avg one behaved exactly as described and required a roll back to the most recent restore point.

had i not had another pc and found the post, id be going nuts. big thanks.

Me too. Now my laptop is slow and unreliable.

[ajahnlau]

Same,same. Upgraded to AVG 2011 and the problems began. After reading the very helpful posts here scraped it and installed Avast. Problems solved. Thanks to all.