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Wednesday 23 March 2016

AVG Free 2016 - "Your online security is incomplete" - Annoying Pop Up

UPDATES - SEE BOTTOM OF THIS POST
For some people, this pop up is coming up daily. It is a pop up to install AVG Web Tune-Up, the trial of the Pro (paid) version, disguised as a scare about your Internet Security.

Here is the wording of the pop-up:
AVG Free Pop Up "Your online security is incomplete. Install online security features for maximum protection. Options: Remind Me LaterInstall Now. Or, click the X in the top right of the pop up.

This particular pop up in AVG Free has become quite annoying as it is coming up every day or two. These types of pop ups from AVG used to come up every month or so, but they have escalated their campaign to get you to use their other products. AVG Free has been a great all around product to use, but this new pop up frequency is making it very annoying.This particular pop up is actually to try to get you to upgrade to the trial of the pro (paid) version of the program, not to install some extra program. It is misleading in that it may make people think that it is for an additional part, and not the full program. (If you do end up installing the trial version of the full program, go into Control Panel, Programs and Features and remove AVG. You will end up being given the choice to switch to the free version, so you can do that.)

I am in the process of researching other free antivirus products that would be as versatile and effective, yet not so annoying (So far Avira and Avast are in the running, but they come with other problems). In the meantime, here is a workaround solution that I am testing out. Feel free to test this out yourself. Use this workaround at your own risk. So far it seems to be working for me

SOLUTION ONE
[UPDATE: This one does not work]
If you are getting this AVG pop up every day or every couple of days, here is a temporary solution for now:

1- Click on the X in the pop up to close it, if it is open.
2- Right-click on the AVG icon in the bottom right of your screen in the Notification area
3- Click on Temporarily disable AVG protection.
4- Navigate to this folder C:\Program Files (x86)\AVG\Av\
5- Delete the following three folders: Awacs, Banners, Tuneup. [Do not delete anything else. If you accidentally delete anything else go to the recycle bin and restore it.]
6- Re-enable AVG protection (right-click on the AVG icon you clicked on in step 2 and choose Enable AVG protection  (it may take a minute for it to come back on, so ignore any Windows pop ups that say your security is disabled))
7- Done (until the next major AVG program update)

I found this tip in this AVG forum:
https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b0000000bn1CAAQ
by AVG user Mike C.

I'll let you know how this goes after a few days.


SOLUTION TWO
Another possible solution
(Again, try this at your own risk.)
- Fully Remove AVG Free and related AVG products if they are installed too.
- Use CCleaner's Registry cleaner to clean out leftover AVG entries
- Go to this link and download the appropriate AVG Free version for your computer (32bit or 64bit), and install this version.

Again, this will probably only work until the next major AVG Free update.

Note: This will either fix the problem, or fix it for a temporary period (of maybe a few weeks). At this point, the only way to tell is to try it.

This tip is from John Smith in the same forum.


**** I will post updates here in this post as I discover what works, what doesn't, and if nothing works, what alternatives are out there.

UPDATES
Solution One did not work - the pop-up notification came right back up the next day.

Wednesday 9 March 2016

Windows 10 Upgrade Warning

If you have a computer that was brand new previous to the summer of 2015, you should NOT upgrade it to Windows 10.

Windows 10 works very well in a new computer today (or new since the summer of 2015). But for older computers, especially ones that originally ran Windows 7, you can potentially run into some big problems. The big problem is that, although the hardware drivers for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are supposed to work for Windows 10, they don't always. And, for an older computer (like one running Windows 7 originally), there will most likely NOT be any driver updates to help it run Windows 10 properly. So, if you have an older machine, you may, if you upgrade to Windows 10, end up with a machine that no longer works properly. It may be that the laptop DVD drive is no longer recognized, or the wireless adapter in the computer is no longer recognized, or worse.

So, by best advice is:
DO NOT UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 10 unless the computer was brand new at the end of the summer of 2015, or more recently.