Remove AVG 8 Notification Area
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If you are like me, I have found the notification area in AVG annoying. So today when I found this gem of a fix, I immediately tried it and it worked just fine. Follow the instructions exactly and you should not have any issues.
Follow the below steps to disable the appearance of the irritating AVG 8 notification area:
1. Open Notepad or another plain text editor.
2. Copy and paste the following three lines from this page into the text editor:
@echo off
ren avgmwdef_us.mht avgmwdef_us.mht.bak
ren avgresf.dll avgresf.dll.bak
3. Save the text document containing the above three lines in the location where AVG 8 is installed. By default, this will be C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8. Save the file as something like “AVGNotifyOff.bat”, without the quotes. It really doesn’t matter how you name the file, so long as you can identify it, and it ends in the “.bat” extension, so Windows sees it as a batch file.
4. Once the file’s saved, close the text editor, navigate in Windows Explorer or My Computer to C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8, locate the batch file document you saved in step 3 above, and you should be able to run the file by pressing and releasing the Enter key. All the batch file does is rename two files with a “.bak” (backup) extension, so the files are still there, it’s just that AVG can’t see them any more, and you should find that the bottom line of the AVG user interface window no longer displays the “Hide notification, button” item.Note: Trying to run the batch file more than once is useless unless an AVG program update has replaced the two files which have been renamed. This trick is subject to stop working if AVG releases a program update which uses a different method to display the irritating notification.
If you should want or need to undo the above trick, all you need to do is navigate to C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8, locate each of the two files with a “.bak” extension, press and release the F2 function key to bring up the rename dialog, press the End key to move the cursor to the end of the filename, then press and release the Backspace key four times to delete the “.bak” extension, then press and release the Enter key to keep the new name. This procedure must be done twice, once for each of the two files with the “.bak” extension. However, you shouldn’t need to undo the trick.
I hope you find this trick useful. Enjoy.
Comments welcome.
24 Comments
Security Updates As Of August 3, 2008 ~ The Blade by Ron Schenone, MVP
August 3rd, 2008
at 5:48am
[...] Remove AVG 8 Notification Area Sunday, August 3, 2008 [...]
Denny
August 3rd, 2008
at 11:16am
Thanks Ron………..
____It worked __ No More
***
………………….irritating AVG 8 notification area…………..
Thanks FUR — DUH — COOL — TIP !
Ron Schenone
August 3rd, 2008
at 12:05pm
Hello Denny,
Glad you liked it.
Bobzilla
August 3rd, 2008
at 1:52pm
Windows users never cease to amaze me. They pay BIG bucks for their operating system, only to skimp on a free security product to protect their investment. Next they complain that the free security product has bugs and no email support. And low and behold….. disable AVG notification area, seems it’s annoying to them. Oh well, my OS doesn’t need virus and spyware protection.
GOOSE
August 3rd, 2008
at 4:55pm
Boy,…..I wonder how much that guy paid for his operating system that does not need this stuff…..Oh by the way, Ron and Denny, don’t you just push the button that says “hide notification”?
Ron Schenone
August 4th, 2008
at 7:08am
Heh Goose,
This eliminates the notification window. It is just a trick, not something that will have any affect on your system.
Marcus Hamaker
August 4th, 2008
at 7:10am
Nice trick. With the average user moving away from AVG 7 this will come up more and more for people who support their friends and family.
Uhhh…. me!
Ron Schenone
August 4th, 2008
at 7:12am
Hi Marcus,
I hear you.
DougCuk
August 4th, 2008
at 7:23am
Or you could just follow the short version of this trick:
Open My Computer and navigate to:
C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8
Locate the following two files:
avgmwdef_us.mht
avgresf.dll
Rename each file by adding .BAK to the end of each file name. Any change to the name will do the trick - you don’t have to use .BAK - it just stops AVG finding these files.
I suspect AVG may bring in a differently named MHT file at some point with a new message but the same trick should work on any new MHT file used in this way.
Denny
August 4th, 2008
at 7:25am
HAY .. Bobzilla
***
______ Ron and I don’t Put Out Big-Bucks Fur Nuttin..
___________ FREE __ BE . My . Favorite . Word
BillH
August 4th, 2008
at 7:44am
I agree with Bobzilla. And I paid only time to download the DVD for OpenSuSE to get my OS.
Ron Schenone
August 4th, 2008
at 7:57am
Hello DougCuk,
Thanks for the info.
Denny,
I like FREE!
BillH,
Point well taken.
Radioguy
September 22nd, 2008
at 6:41pm
THANKS! It worked like a charm.
Evan
November 8th, 2008
at 12:41pm
Bobzilla you’re a retard. If you had actually used AVG free you’d know that the notification area is merely a (large) pane that nags you to upgrade to a non-free version. It has nothing to do with the virus protection.
Thanks
January 10th, 2009
at 6:27am
Thanks for the avg fix, worked good.
Simon Martin
January 11th, 2009
at 12:28am
Heres a long version for you people out there that need it.
Locate your AVG directory in explorer
(can right click of start button and click ‘Explore’)
in the left plane find your version
(standard is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\AVG\AVG8 or
C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8)
————————————–
In explorer press the ‘alt’ key then press ‘t’ then press ‘o’
(which brings up the top menu —> tools —> folder options)
There are three tabs in folder options general: view: and search,
click on the view tab.
Untick ‘Hide extensions for know file types’
Click Appy and Ok.
——————————————–
First locate the file ‘ren avgmwdef_us.mht’ in the AVG folder, select it and either right click -> rename or select file and press F2 to rename, and put a dot bak on the end.
The file should be now named ‘avgmwdef_us.mht.bak’
Now do the same for the file ‘avgresf.dll’ or it is now named ‘avgresf.dll.bak’
(all this is doing is disabling the two files to do with the notification window,
completley removing the notification plane, if you ever want them back, you
can come back to this folder and remove the dot bak from the end of the names)
——————————————–
Now you can turn the ‘Hide extensions for know file types’ back on.
In explorer press the ‘alt’ key then press ‘t’ then press ‘o’
(which brings up the top menu —> tools —> folder options)
There are three tabs in folder options general: view: and search,
click on the view tab.
Tick ‘Hide extensions for know file types’
Click Appy and Ok.
____________________________
Now AVG is once more Add free :-), thankyou AVG for such a great product!
dfk
February 6th, 2009
at 12:10am
thanks dude, works great!
Rich
February 20th, 2009
at 9:50am
Excellent little trick. Perfect
JL
March 13th, 2009
at 1:18pm
Does not work for AVG 8.5 version
Sime
March 14th, 2009
at 3:25am
In the latest AVG 8.5 there’s another file that needs renaming. Open Notepad and copy and paste these four lines then follow the original instructions at the top of the page.
@echo off
ren avgmwdef_us.mht avgmwdef_us.mht.bak
ren avgresf.dll avgresf.dll.bak
ren avgfree_us.mht avgfree_us.mht.bak
Ron Schenone
March 14th, 2009
at 4:45am
Thanks you Sime. I’ll do another article with the information you provided.
Thanks, Ron
Remove AVG 8.5 Notification Area In Free Version ~ The Blade by Ron Schenone, MVP
March 14th, 2009
at 4:58am
[...] article on how to remove the notification area from the free version of AVG 8. [Original article is here] Since than, version 8.5 has been introduced and the old instructions no longer work. Yesterday [...]
Bondt
March 25th, 2009
at 4:07am
Thanks Sime, works like a charm! (of course thanks to Ron too, for the original fix!)
Cherry
July 11th, 2009
at 7:58pm
well this worked for a while haha and to rename a couple of files to end with .bak i read somewhere in the past quit working too so i guess avg is determined to annoy us not only with their boggy avg8 but also with the drop notification window.
i am in process of searching ratings for other free anti-virus programs because i just dont like avg now that 8 came out.
i paid for pc-cillin for eight years but their tech support just got dumber and dumber each year so bad i got so sick of their having a great product that they know nothing about and i decided i am not paying for these programs any more.
i have put far too much money into this kind of mess for it all to turn out to be a pain in my behind. i figure if it all has to be such a pain at least let that pain be free ahaahaaha