Ron Schenone

AVG Version 8 – Minor Warning Issue[s] Resolved

Posted by on Apr 25, 2008 | 29 Comments

Yesterday I played around with AVG 8, tweaking some settings and doing multiple scans on my personal system, which I have always prided myself in keeping as a, lean, mean, fighting machine. But my jaw dropped as AVG 8 started to report a flood of registry entries tied to CoolWebSearch. Here is what happened.

After installing AVG 8 I did a full scan. Though the system reported there were no infections on my machine, under what the system states are ‘warnings’, was a host of registry entries similar to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\ActiveXCompatibility\{33653C70-F82F-3235-E5B9-5751B1F39585};”Found Adware.CoolWebSearch”;”Potentially dangerous object”

After the scan was completed I clicked on the heal all button and during the process AVG 8 indicated the files exceeded the amount the virus vault could hold. AVG 8 froze up. OK. I can fix that. I tweaked the vault to use unlimted space and increased the files from 1,000 o 10,000. Mess with me! No joy. Same results.

I finally saved the report in .cvc format I looked at all of the alleged rogue files and I noticed a pattern. Some of the entries were repeated, and repeated and repeated again. Eventually I found that 65 registry entries were repeated 11,992 times! So I fire up regedit, locate the offending entries and dump them. Do a new scan and surprise. All is well.

I’m just reporting this in case anyone else has this enjoyable experience.

Comments welcome.

Overall opinion about the new versions – I like it! I’ll do a complete review next week.

[tags]avg, version, 8, report, registry, errant, errors, fix,  [/tags]

  • Carolyn Loftis

    I have the same problem that you just wrote about but I don’t know how to find the entries to edit the registry keys. Is there somplace I can find that information?

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello Carolyn Loftis,
    First of all, if you haven’t used the regedit command be careful. You may wish to seek assistance from a guru.

    With that being said, once you enter into the registry using regedit, you would use the find command to locate the errant registry files.

    http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1151313

    Hope this helps.

  • Denny

    HAY–RON..

    One other thing I Changed was the . . AUTO-UPDATE
    I was wondering why I wasn’t Seeing My AVG-8 Updating in the morning .
    Like 7.5 . >>> Default setting is at 2-PM……..

    I Changed it to 7-AM .
    I Like To Have all my Updates Inplace when I start each day
    . . . Just in Case I . :-) . ACCIDENTLY . Go
    To One Of Those Sites That Likes to . LOAD . FREE . CRITERS

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Denny,
    Good point. I changed my scheduled update time as well.
    Regards, Ron

  • Abydos

    You sure those entries didn’t belong to another security program?
    Alot of people are experiencing problems with Spybot S&D and Spywareblaster. Somehow it seems, AVG 8.0 picks up those entries made immune by those two programs. I had the same experience with AVG. Turned off protection mode for Spywareblaster, and all entries were gone in the scan right after.

  • Dan

    Same problem Ron, but are the 65 files that are repeated in the AVG8.0 scan really significant in causing harm to our comps?!?!

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello Dan,
    When I looked at the folder I removed that contained the gunk I removed, they appeared is dead registry entries. At least mine appeared so. I would imagine that if you have been keeping your system clean, there most likely be no harm. Just annoying. :-)

    HI Abydos,
    I don’t know where the entry came from. But deleting the folder did way with the problem.

  • aubeachbum

    Are you using Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal ??

    I got 24,000+ warnings in AVG 8.0 and managed to remove all the “threats” through the Virus Vault (several 1000 at a time).

    After removing them Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal’s SECURITY DEFENSE showed 24,000+ unprotected items.

    So it appears that the HKLM registry entries are actually part of Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal’s defences !!

    On this assumption I have re-instated the SECURITY DEFENSE and will ignore AVG’s warnings.

    Does this help ??

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi aubeachbum,
    Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

  • http://www.financialsecurityspecialists.com Gary Powell

    Hi! I am one ofthose “know enough to be dangerous” types. Updated AVG to 8 since they sent me an email saying I should. Now my compuer is running very poorly. The CPU goes to max frequently. I found and turned of the index searcher and their cousins (they were running full steam for some reason) but even now I am having a lot of trouble. Should I uninstall and go back to 7.5?

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello Gary,
    You did uninstall 7.5 before upgrading to 8?
    Have you tried uninstalling 8 and doing a reinstall? Others have reported problems which were cured after a reinstall.
    Let us know.

  • http://smboren@sbcglobal.net Susan

    Ron,
    I went to free.grisoft.com and tried again and this time it worked! So maybe they were having issues today when I tried. Hopefully I don’t have problems with it. Also it DID uninstall by itself and I did not have to do it..

    Susan

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Susan,
    Thanks for letting us know.

  • John

    Hi Ron, thank goodness we have sites like this to air our problems. Regading AVG8, I have had the same experience as aubeachbum, about 24,000 odd warnings and when I got rid of some of them I ran Adv.Win’care and found 14477 were unprotected so there must be a link there somewhere. I too reinstated them and will ignore those warnings on AVG in future.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi John,
    It is ashame that so many people are having issues with AVG 8. 24k warnings is ludicrous. It makes one wonder how many people who are not aware of the problem may panic when seeing this for the first time. Hopefully AVG is taking notice and will correct this mess. :-(

  • Ros

    hey i just upgraded from avg7.5 to 8.0 (free edition), all seems to be well but there is one issue that is irratating me.

    I dont like the automatic updates (cause first thing on boot up it accesses the net bla bla bla… sometimes i have something urgent to do, i hate AVG holding me up)

    Anyway with AVG 7.5 i had it disabled, no problem. Now with 8 i have done the same except the system tray icon shows the “you may not be protected” icon (grey AVG symbol with red exclamation)opposed to the running normal AVG icon.

    the only “error” is the personal choice of wanting to manually update, is there a way of getting AVG 8 to understand i want to manually update and not display the warning icon? cant see anything in the advanced options either.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello ros,
    Try this:
    Go to Tools – Advanced Settings – Schedules – Scheduled Scans and uncheck the startup option.

    Also you may wish to get the AVG 8 user manual:

    http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe#tba3

    Hope this helps.

  • Ros

    cheers Ron,

    I had actually done that, but on reading your comment i realised i could have automatic updates scheduled. But I put it to only on Saturdays at 4am in the morning and if that’s missed (more than likely, 4am on my lappy on Sat night! Are ya joking?!!!) it wont update on start up either cause i’ve unchecked that too. So now avg’s saying all is cool and it wont hassle me when i boot up.

    manual all the way!

    Cheers again,
    Ros

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Ros,
    Glad you got AVG 8 configured the way you want. I’m a manual person myself. :-)

  • Pingback: AVG Free Edition 8.0.100 Reviewed - Upgrade Now ~ The Blade by Ron Schenone, MVP

  • Satish

    Hi everyone!

    I did the same as Ron did. I clicked on the Heal all .. button….And then AVG turned devil on my system…I guess it started deleting all those registry entries. It also deleted some good ones and some very good ones that are actually required without which the system would not function!! Yes, it corrupted my registry! Although it did pup up a warning like “If you force delete some entries, it will crash the system and blah blah…!” and I am 100% sure that I had selected “NO” for those entries….yet, my PC shutdown on its own and began to re-boot.

    On re-boot, it wldnt successfully reboot as it always threw up a system error on Lsass.exe – An invalid parameter was passed to a service or function. On clicking “OK”, it wld reboot again and I was stuck!! No respite whatesoever….all my data on the laptop was at stake. I tried all options..safe mode, restore last good config, repair Win XP, but nothing worked. There was hardly any help avlbl on the internet as well for this error. :-( It threw the same error over and over again !! Finally, I had to install WinXp again on my machine at a different location (originally it was at C:\Windows). I installed it to a location C:\WinXP. It installed to that location successfully and I cld boot my laptop and access all the required data…finally it was such a HUGE relief!!! I immed. backed up all the data and formatted the laptop. Installed a fresh copy of everything….and I hope it now works well.

    I wanted to share this experience with all the users of AVG8.0 as I was really shocked and disappointed with this. I have been using AVG7.5 for the past 6 months and it has been amazing. I dont know it it was just AVG8.0 or whether it was my system too…but it definitely wasnt a good experience.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Satish,
    Thanks for sharing your experience with us. It is unbelievable how much damage version 8 is causing some folks.

    I am recommending that people hold off installing 8 until the end of the year. Hopefully by that time all of the issues will be fixed.

    Regards, Ron

  • http://haventgotone saywid

    my system is laptop xp windows 512 ram, 40 gig hard drive. My competence is marginal i suspect;-

    I had the minor warnings problem when first i installed avg8 and did a total computer scan – 470 minor warnings!! Crikey!!! And yet, Spyware Doctor[SD] was saying all clear? I ran avg 8 over each location separately – C drive, email, etc, one at a time. And each location was deemed free of infection. So, the total score for infections and threats, when avg 8 ran over each drive and location separately was zero – the same as when SD was scanning the whole computer in one session. So i ran avg8 again over the whole computer in one session – 470 minor warnings???. So i uninstalled SD, and ran Avg8 as a one full scan over the whole computer – zero warnings, zero threats.

    I’m planning reinstall SD and see what happens with avg8′s minor warnings. SD is a fast install and fast uninstall thankfully. avg8 is a slow install etc.

    Also, i had a 20-30 second delay when trying to launch Word 2003 from desktop icon, after startup, as a virus scan was being messaged in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. This had been a problem i fixed by disabling the relevant plugin when using avg7.5, but couldn’t disable with avg8. First launch of word after startup takes 7 secs now, and all launches after that first one, are less than two seconds – fast enough.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    saywid,
    Thanks for the info. Let us know how things progress.

  • http://noneyet saywid

    There’s been no repeat of the implausible minor warnings problem with avg 8, which you outlined previously, and to which I replied. It now makes no difference whether Sypware Doctor[SD] is installed or not, though it did seem to at first. But since SD isn’t finding any problems when it is re-installed, and since SD tends to slow my system, I’m leaving it uninstalled temporarily, and letting avg8 run solo with one daily full scan. The startup time to have all my desktop icons ready, is about 5 seconds quicker without SD. The time taken to initially open Word, from the desktop icon after startup without SD, is about 5-7 seconds, and this increases to about 20 secs with SD installed – though avg8 is still indicating it is routinely running a virus scan on first Word launch – it’s just doing it much faster than avg 7.5 seemed to. I hope this makes sense.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello saywid,
    Thanks once again. It seems that AVG has issued a few fix-it updates to correct some of the original problems. In a few weeks a service pack will also be issued and hopefully all issues will be corrected.

    Thanks, Ron

  • http://majorwarningresultsandspyware,etc.. John Jackson

    I had avg 7.5 ror about 3 years! the program was installed by verison premium tech support. ran great untill. this last month. upgraded to 8.o avg. and i must say Iwas told this program is “no good” by best buy tech support?????? The problem I have is… Like many others I see? Is being able to Heal the trojan horse/c.! and many other spyware and found Trojan horse issues. Plesase help me with your expert knowlodge. Thank You, Joh Jackson.

  • http://majorwarningresultsandspyware,etc.. John Jackson

    still waiting on some comment. buut will let you know what — i thought about the feedback I receive. Thanks JJ,.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello John,
    May I recommend that you contact the AVG Free Forum and post your problem. There group of experts can readily assist you with any issues you may have

    http://freeforum.avg.com/

    Regards, Ron