Latest AVGFree Release Wouldn't Disable

[Eck]

Just to relate my experience with the new 7.5 AVGFree release when used on Vista.

The Control Center properties windows that has a check mark to run the AVG background scanner would pop up an AVG message informing me that I did not have permission to save my settings if I tried to uncheck it and click Allow or Okay. Other than that it works fine.

Since I couldn't disable the background scanner I uninstalled AVG and installed Avast, which had no problem saving my settings. This tells me that there was no Vista UAC permission problem (no Windows box popped up, only an AVG message), but a problem with AVG's implementation in the new version.

I tried to be helpful by posting to the AVGFree board on their Other Issues thread, but got only a rude pair of responses from the a---hole moderator who closed the thread, preventing any meaningful discussion.

I'm dahveed3 over there so, if interested you can check out my attempt to help them. It went unappreciated. I got only a teenaged type of response that if I didn't want to be a guinea pig I shouldn't be using Vista. I had only said that I unfortunately would not be able to help further as a guinea pig (in a good way!) since it wasn't on the machine at the moment. Don't mind being a guinea pig at all, and have thoughout the beta program for Vista reported several incidents to hopefully help Microsoft work out the bugs.

So to all my friends here I can only say that perhaps something is not quite right with the new AVGFree when using it on Vista. I'm sure their designers aren't like the seemingly 12 year old moderator I encountered and they will fix things up. But for now then best free Anti-Virus for Vista seems to be Avast, which provides more features anyway.

I just think they might fix stuff faster if it got reported instead of being pushed aside by children running their boards. I don't care if he's 50. His demeaner was that of a little boy. His boss should spank him.

He, he, sorry for the rant but I'm fuming a bit at the moment. Certainly won't be posting over there again. Might use the product. It's pretty good, after all. But since that forum is the only communication available for free users they really should communicate in a more civilized, less haughty manner. I feel like spanking the whole company.

[cluberti]

The only thing I would have suggested trying (other than something other than AVG) would have been to install using the actual administrator account (if that wasn't done) and to run without UAC, as a test, to see if things worked right in that scenario. Obviously that's not a fix, but at least it tells us where the problem lies if that works.

[Eck]

Thank you, cluberti,

See, that is exactly the type of helpful suggestion I have come to expect and offer up here. If I had read something like that I may have been persuaded to reinstall the product and try a few things out just to be helpful to the company as well as other users on the board.

For further information to our readers, I had installed AVGFree on the Administrator account that Windows Vista installs by default when setting up Windows for the first time. I understand this account runs in a standard user mode, enabling administrator tasks through the use of UAC requests to permit those actions.

In this case when installing AVGFree I had right clicked the setup file and chose to run as administrator, selecting to continue when asked by UAC to permit the activities.

When using the taskbar AVG icon to run the AVG Control Panel resulted in the AVG popup message when I tried to apply turning the background scanner off, I then tried accessing it by right clicking the desktop AVG shortcut and choosing to run as administrator. Unfortunately this resulted in the same AVG error popup stating that I did not have permission to save settings when I tried to uncheck the option to use the background scanner and apply it. The only option that was permitted was to cancel.

As UAC hadn't popped up at all I gathered that this was something awry in how the AVG program is designed to interact with Vista's UAC in the latest AVGFree release. Since it was new, I thought I'd help them out by reporting my experience.

I'm sure the AVG designer's intent is to make this option seamless and without this kind of error, with the possible exception (though possibly not, as well) of when only a standard user attempts to turn off the background scanner. Disabling UAC would have been something to try, but of course a program designed to work on Vista shouldn't need to have such a basic security feature turned off in order to function correctly. A beta or test version, yes. Not a release version.

If they had requested that I help them to sort it out I likely would have done so. But I have the suspicion that they have plenty of testers in house where they can test out the problem. Not too worried about that!

But their forum mod's should certainly by a bit more appreciative of reports of problems that their labs might not have been aware of. How about, "I'm sorry you needed to uninstall our product in order to get your software programs installed and defragged without the background scanner running. I will report your difficulties to the appropriate design team to make them aware of this possible bug."

That's the kind of professional approach that would encourage folks to use a product, and possibly upgrade to a paid version.

Some of this is probably more appropriately an AVG Forum post, but I did want to make Vista users of this forum aware that the problem could happen, since it did to me. And I didn't see the point of attempting to scold or teach a forum moderator! Kind of hopeless, eh? I'd be dismissed pretty quickly, I imagine.

Edited November 18, 2006 by Eck