I always know when AVG release a new version of their fantastic free anti-virus software as it usually results in a torrent of abuse being launched towards me by my readership – “you said this software was free and now it’s asking me for money or it’ll stop working.”

Now, I must admit that it is true that whenever a new version of AVG is released and an old version is discontinued, they do try and push users down the route of buying the more advanced package. I don’t blame them for this as everybody needs to make money, however those that actually bother reading the message will see that there is still a free option available. It is this version, AVG 8, which I will be reviewing today.

I have always pitched AVG as being the anti-virus checker that my readers should be using and amazingly the best thing about this application ISN’T the fact that it’s free – In actual fact there are plenty of reasons that you would want to use AVG even if you had to pay for it.

My favourite feature of the application is its non intrusive nature; it silently gets on with it – In my opinion there is nothing worse than a virus checker that gets you too involved and prevents you from getting along with the job in hand. Everything is done in the background so you want have to be involved if you rather understandably don’t want to be; it will update itself and even perform full system scans without you ever realising and then, if it finds a virus it will efficiently dispose of it.

Install and forget is a nice philosophy and beats gigantic boated pieces of software such as Norton Internet Security which prompt you every 15 seconds about problems that you wish it would just work out for itself; I’ve never understood a virus scanner which will actually ask me if I want to remove a virus it has found. In my eyes this is a stupid question – why would I voluntarily keep something that is liable to wipe my hard drive and provide me with months of extra unpaid work?

Version 8 improves on the background scanning of the previous AVG application and provides new and quite possibly overdue Spyware protection, along with a handy LinkScanner feature. The latter is a new component which provides you with a quick graphical evaluation of a sites perceived safety before you visit it whenever you do an Internet search in an engine such as Google. It works by taking the findings of those that use the AVG toolbar by warning you via a small graphical link if a site that appears in your search results is likely to be malicious.

Updates are provided free of charge for the life of the product and of course all the usual features such as e-mail scanning and resident shield are provided and turned on by default.

In terms of installation, the application is a 45.6mb download which can be obtained by visiting http://free.grisoft.com – It is worrying to see such the size has growth significantly from AVG 7.5’s 16mb footprint but this is still much smaller than many other virus checkers on the market. After advice given to me by our resident techie who resides upstairs from Refresh at Switch Computer Support, I would recommend removing AVG 7 before installing version 8 as by all accounts the installation program does sometimes simply ‘forget’ to remove the old version first which can cause problems.

I’m still genuinely amazed by the number of my readers who are still using paid for anti-virus programs after I have recommended time and time again a completely free solution. I’m assuming the reasoning is that the public believe that a free version of an application as important as a virus [...]]]>

I’m still genuinely amazed by the number of my readers who are still using paid for anti-virus programs after I have recommended time and time again a completely free solution. I’m assuming the reasoning is that the public believe that a free version of an application as important as a virus checker would be substandard and offer inadequate protection hence why I’m here today to try and change this perception.

I think there’s no better way to change this perception than to ask a home user to look at the typical anti-virus software of choice used by IT professionals. Rather than using the larger commercial applications these people often choose to use products such as AVG and this is for more reasons than simply cost. Many in the industry are very much under whelmed by the quality of many of the larger paid for solutions and without singling out individual products I can assume that this is because as a rule of thumb they are often intrusive, bloated and have the additional downside that you have to pay for them yearly.

For years I have recommended the anti-virus solution AVG and coincidentally they have just released a major new upgrade, version 7.5 which is completely free to download and use from http://free.grisoft.com. The software is fairly small in size (16mb) so shouldn’t take too long to download on even a modest connection and once installed it’ll just sit quietly down in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and will only pop up to bother you when it really needs to.

As you would expect the program continuously run in the background checking for viruses as you work but this isn’t a problem because it is such a small piece of software so doesn’t make a dent on the speed of your machine or resources available to other programs unlike many of the commercial products on the market. The majority of the day to day tasks of the program can be automated so that you don’t have to worry about updating the virus database of performing full system scans as this will all be done for you – In actual fact most of the time you’ll probably just forget it’s there.

A handy feature is that the software seamlessly integrates itself in to your e-mail client and rather than updating you on the progress of scanning each message it works completely transparently – if an infected message is found it is simply moved to the virus vault and you hear no more about it.

In terms of the security it is reassuring to know that the team at AVG release frequent updates to the virus definitions database so that you’re always protected against the latest threats. Recent certifications have been granted to the software by the likes VB100%, ICSA, and West Coast Labs Checkmark which provides additional piece of mind that you are dealing with a dependable product.

You may well be wondering why they go to all this effort to produce this product and then give it away for free especially since it isn’t supported in anyway by intrusive adverts. Alas, this isn’t just out of the kindness of their hearts but in fact there is a more comprehensive commercial version which includes features such as an anti-spam and anti-spyware filter along with an integrated firewall. These are all fairly minor problems as Microsoft provide a firewall in Windows XP by default and Windows Defender is a capable Spyware filter that can be freely downloaded from www.microsoft.com. With regards to anti-spam I did review the free ‘MailWasher’ package only four weeks ago and those that missed that particular week can view a copy at www.computerarticles.co.uk

Regular readers of my column will know of my continued support of the free version of the online AVG virus checker. Whilst it is by no means perfect I do prefer it to other virus checkers I have tried on the market mainly due to the fact that it is [...]]]>

Regular readers of my column will know of my continued support of the free version of the online AVG virus checker. Whilst it is by no means perfect I do prefer it to other virus checkers I have tried on the market mainly due to the fact that it is a small, unobtrusive product which does the job extremely well.

I am not a big fan of huge programs such as Norton Internet Security as although they do their job well they always seem to interfere with the running of the PC a little too much with their bulky software.

I like things to be kept simple and hence hate to see Windows XP machines with the inbuilt firewall software turned on along with a dozen other products sat in the background running secondary firewalls, spam prevention, anti-virus protection, parental controls, privacy control software and so on. There really is no need especially when you consider that all these programs cost money which could be saved and spent on something a little more useful.

In the past I have seen speedy machines fall to their knees after having had the entire Mcafee suite installed and this really isn’t necessary! The reason for this little criticism about some users’ security arrangements has been bought about by the news that AVG Anti-virus 7 Free Edition has been recently released to supersede the AVG 6 Free Edition I have been recommending in the past.

There are several improvements in this new software to the scanning engine, user interface and e-mail scanner but nothing too dramatic. Having said that it is certainly worth existing users downloading the new software especially when you consider that support for AVG 6 will be discontinued shortly.

A question I am asked over and over again is how do they make such a supposedly good virus checker if it is free of charge, especially if it contains no spyware or advertising? Who pays for it? The answer is simply that the authors make money from professional users who wish to deploy AVG across networks or file severs and those home users who require more features than the free edition. Providing the free edition to home users is a good way to spread the word about the software and provides a perfect way for devising improvements due to feedback from existing users.

Assuming that you are using Windows XP, I would personally work on the following configuration to obtain the ideal balance between security and speed.

- Install Windows XP Service pack 2 or obtain the free CD by visiting www.microsoft.com

- Ensure the inbuilt Windows XP firewall is active and that your system is set to update itself automatically with the latest Windows updates.

- Uninstall any out of date Anti-Virus software and download AVG Free Edition from www.grisoft.com and ensure that it is set to update automatically.

- Download Spybot Search & Destroy from security.kolla.de, choose to update the program and then set it to scan for Spyware and help immunise you against further infection.

The best news about all of these security features is that they won’t cost you a penny and although you obviously don’t have to take my advice I believe that people make a big deal about securing their computers online and confusion in the market has lead to people buying products they don’t require and worst of all slowing their machines down. By using a touch of commonsense and following the four steps above you can ensure that your Windows XP machine is safe online without costing you a penny and without any nasty side effects. Just trust me!

My idea last week of starting a dating agency for virus programmers so that they have something better to do with their lives than annoying normal hardworking people had a very good response however I’m afraid that I’m going to have to put this on hold for the time due [...]]]>

My idea last week of starting a dating agency for virus programmers so that they have something better to do with their lives than annoying normal hardworking people had a very good response however I’m afraid that I’m going to have to put this on hold for the time due to time restraints. First, I’m sorry to bang on for yet another month about viruses; I do promise that this is the last time for a while but it still seems that many of you are becoming infected with viruses which is needless when you consider that protection is available free of charge.

At present I am receiving around 20 (twenty) viruses a day via e-mail and the reason for this is that many customers and readers are infected and as such the virus is picking my e-mail address off of their systems and e-mailing itself to me. Whilst I’m not too bothered as my virus checker picks up the suspect attachments and deletes them immediate it could soon get to the stage where essentially my customers will be e-mailing me every minute with a new virus; thanks a million!

It is for this reason that this week all people reading my article are obliged to take 5 minutes out of their Saturday afternoon to run a completely free, up to date virus check of their system online. If a virus is found then you will be able to thank me as I will have just sped up your computer, avoided you passing it along to others and removed the possibility of the virus causing data loss. If nothing is found then I do apologise for wasting 5 minutes of your time but at least you will know that you’re in the clear for now and that you are virus free. This virus checker involves no software being installed into your computer and as I said is completely free of charge; just head to http://housecall.trendmicro.com and then click on the text that reads ‘Scan Now. It’s Free!’

It could take a few minutes to download the checker and the latest virus definitions that the site has to teach it and then it will ask you which locations on your computer wish to scan. Simply select your ‘C’ drive as well as any other hard disks you have in your machine, click on ‘Auto Clean’ and then click on scan. Now might be a good idea to go off and make a cup of tea or go down the pub as it will take a little while when you consider that Trend Housecall searches every file for the presence of viruses and will clean any that it may find; the process is completely automated so you are not required to sit and watch it. Even if you do have an existing virus checker on your machine then I would still recommend doing this today as the online virus checker couldn’t be more up to date and it may well detect a virus that your current checker doesn’t know of.

Ultimately the checker is free of charge, very easy to use and will only take a few minutes of your time. There is really no reason that you shouldn’t now be turning on your machine and going to the website address I gave above. If we get everyone in Torbay to do it then whoever it is with the infected machine which is sending me the NetSky virus will then know about it, remove the virus and hopefully me in peace to run my business!

Once your system is clean it may be an idea to install a new virus checker if you don’t already have an up to date one on your system. AVG (www.grisoft.com) is one of the best free ones I’ve discovered although I have reviewed this system in the past so I won’t go into details again here.

This week I’ve been considering setting up a dating agency for virus programmers; in my opinion if we could get them out of the house and into social circles then they wouldn’t spend their Saturday nights creating viruses such as the Sasser worm which I’ve had to spend this week [...]]]>

This week I’ve been considering setting up a dating agency for virus programmers; in my opinion if we could get them out of the house and into social circles then they wouldn’t spend their Saturday nights creating viruses such as the Sasser worm which I’ve had to spend this week removing from various computers around the bay. Unfortunately I believe this could be a short lived dating agency as I’d imagine that the majority of virus programmers would be spotty adolescent boys but it’s still something worth thinking about nevertheless.

Anyway, there is no time to be bitter, the Sasser worm is out in the wild and has already infected tens of thousands of machines so what do we do now to protect ourselves or to remove any traces of it if we are already infected? Luckily it only really affects Windows XP so people with an operating system before this don’t really have to worry; just ensure that your virus checker is up to date and do a complete scan of your system. If you do have Windows XP and don’t believe that you’ve been infected then just ensure that you do a Windows Update and installed all the critical updates and turn on the Internet firewall; it’s as simple as that. If you’re not sure how to turn on your firewall then just right click on your Internet connection, click on ‘properties’ and then on ‘advanced’ then enable the firewall from there.

If you have been infected then chances are that you’ll definitely know it; your machine will be shutting down intermittently and going a lot slower than it did several days ago and in this case there are a number of steps you need to do to clean up your machine. To start, the biggest problem some people are having is that the computer will shut down automatically when connected to the Internet and this is preventing them from installing the appropriate patches. To get around this restart your computer and ensure that it doesn’t reconnect to the Internet automatically when you log back on then click on ‘start’ and ‘run’ and then type in ‘shutdown –i’ which should caused a dialog box to appear. Now just change the 20 seconds setting to 9999 seconds as this will then give you a good few hours to install all the needed updates before your computer restarts. It would also be a good idea to disable System Restore at this point to ensure that Windows doesn’t make a backup of the worm we are trying to remove.

Next we have to remove any instances of the virus running in memory as if the virus is present in the background then it could hinder our attempts to remove it. To do this press <CTRL>, <ALT> and <DELETE> on your keyboard at the same time then when the task manager box appears click on the ‘processes’ tab. Now locate any items in the list that have the names ‘avserve.exe’, ‘avserve2.exe’ or any process consisting of four or five digits followed by ‘_up.exe’ so, for example, ‘5867_up.exe’, click on these processes one at a time and click on ‘End Process’ until they have all disappeared from the list. These processes are all virus files and as I mentioned above we really need to remove these from memory before attempting to permanently remove them from your hard disk.

Now is time to download a removal tool that Symantec have developed; unfortunately the website address to get it off their site is around 130 characters long so I’ve copied it onto my site for ease of publication – Head to www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/fixsasser.exe and then choose to open the file. Simply run it and it should go through and remove any instances of Sasser from your computer. You now want to ensure that your firewall is activated as per the instructions I gave above and then you should go to the Windows Update site and choose to install all of the critical update files. Once this process has completed simply restart your machine and you should be free of Sasser although now would be a good time to ensure that your virus checker is fully up to date and perform a complete scan before breaking open the champagne.

With all the Christmas and New Year celebrations and work that has resulted due to Christmas sales, I’m struggling to get everything tied up and so I thought it would be nice this week if I were to reprint an article I wrote months ago [...]]]>

With all the Christmas and New Year celebrations and work that has resulted due to Christmas sales, I’m struggling to get everything tied up and so I thought it would be nice this week if I were to reprint an article I wrote months ago which many of my readers found particularly helpful but also many of you also missed. This essential piece of software mentioned below really should be downloaded and installed by everybody reading this article along with the free version of the AVG Anti-virus checker which I’ve also been recommending in the past year.

Quite a common complaint submitted by readers is intrusive software which often installs itself onto their systems with no easy way to remove it. Quite often the software contains questionable content such as pornographic links and it can be quite concerning if the computer is shared with other members of the family as there is often no way to delete the links that have been created. I managed to find a nice piece of software called ‘Spybot Search & Destroy’ removes any such questionable software and tries to prevent it from re-returning.

Once you’ve started the program you should scan your system for spyware & adware which takes a couple of minutes to complete and the program then displays a list of the problems that it found on your system along with the option to automatically repair them. It’s surprising how much rubbish many of you will have running in the background constantly as I keep a regularly clean out junk applications and the program managed to detect at least a dozen or so rouge applications installed on my hard drive. By removing them you can free up valuable system resources and also make your computer slightly more pleasant to use and an important point to note is that the software does make a backup as it goes along so if you find that certain programs won’t work anymore then you can always restore your system to how it was previously. Once you’ve cleaned out all the rubbish which has then the program has the option to immunise your system which installs preventative measures to help prevent rouge software from installing itself again.

If you head to http://security.kolla.de/ then the file is 3.5Mg in size so even on a 56k connection it should only take 10 minutes or so to download and the best news is that it’s completely free of charge although the author does ask for a donation if you find it helpful and the free AVG virus checker should be downloaded from www.grisoft.com. To conclude, one of the most annoying areas of the modern Internet is the large number of programmers on the Internet who believe that it is acceptable to install useless software on to your computer without your permission and without any easy way to uninstall just so they can make some quick money. Much of this software exposes you to constant pop up advertising without your permission or tracks your browsing habits so I personally believe that any program which tries to kerb this abuse has to be worth installing.

Another week spent seemingly doing nothing but clearing viruses off the machines of others; in such a day and age everybody reading this article should have a virus checker and those of you that don’t should certainly download one now.

One thing that Windows is still [...]]]>

Another week spent seemingly doing nothing but clearing viruses off the machines of others; in such a day and age everybody reading this article should have a virus checker and those of you that don’t should certainly download one now.

One thing that Windows is still missing which it really needs is a good quality internal virus checker that comes packaged with the Operating System but whether they would be allowed to or whether it would be considered to be anti-competitive is yet to be seen. Personally I would like to see a virus checker built in to every new version of Windows that is update whenever you visit the Windows Update site but also one that could also be disabled in case you wanted to use a third party manufacturer such as Symantec who make Norton Anti-Virus. I can’t think of a single thing that Microsoft could do that would be more fundamental in improving the next version of Windows.

Anyway, with so many viruses floating around it is easy to get caught up in the panic and worry about every virus related e-mail but it is also a time to remain vigilant as a regular reader Tina Stockman will testify when she received the following e-mail:

Dear All

I’m sorry about this; but I received this E-mail from a client regarding a virus that was inadvertently passed on to everyone in their address book. I followed the instructions and YES, IT WAS ON MY COMPUTER. Since you are in my address book, I am sending this on to you as a precaution. NORTON 2002 DID NOT DETECT IT!

Here are the instructions on how to check for this virus and delete it if you have it too. It only took a few minutes, following these instructions. Be sure to notify all in your address book too (which will take longer than deleting the virus from your computer).

Since you are in our address book, there is a good chance you will find it in your computer too unless you have an Apple or MAC. The virus (called jdbgmgr.exe) is not detected by Norton or McAfee anti-virus systems. The virus sits quietly for 14 days before damaging the system. It is sent automatically by messenger and by the address book, whether or not you sent Emails to your contacts. Here’s how to check for the virus and how to get rid of it:

<The virus gives instructions on how to delete said file here>

Am very sorry about this nuisance. This age of technology is not that great sometimes; we are victims!

Now there is a reason why Norton or McAfee didn’t pick up this file as being a virus and that’s because it wasn’t; a friend of Tina had fallen for this hoax earlier on, deleted a Windows system file and then forwarded on to everybody in his address book thinking that he was doing them a favour. To save yourself from doing the same further down the line, never listen to an e-mail that gives you instructions on how to remove a virus manually – If an e-mail does contain a warning then the most it should ask you to do is either update your anti-virus software or perform a Windows Update. Never delete any files based on an e-mail (even if it is from someone you know) and never open attachments claiming to remove a particular virus and if ever in doubt, check out www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html as this contains a fairly complete list of current hoaxes.

If you keep your anti-virus software up to date, perform a Windows update every couple of weeks and read Click to keep apprised of current threats and you should have nothing more to worry about; I used to believe that worrying about things like this was a little over the top but in recent weeks it has been especially important. For those of you who haven’t done so already, get hold of a copy of the fantastic free AVG virus scanner by heading to www.grisoft.com.