The new AVG Anti-Virus 8 comes with a component called LinkScanner (sometimes also called Safe Search) that automatically checks the results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN and displays security information in the form of an icon next to the link. You can hover your mouse over a link and it will pop up detailed information.
This extension can be disabled in AVG by going to the “Tools->Advanced Settings” menu and selecting “LinkScanner” in the tree menu on the left. However, if you do so the AVG icon in your system tray will complain that you have it disabled. 
I prefer to be able to see if my AVG has the latest definitions simply by looking at the system tray and seeing the normal icon. 
Continue reading ‘Disabling AVG Anti-Virus LinkScanner’
AVG Anti-virus recently displayed a popup window telling me that I needed to upgrade from version 7.5 to version 8.0. AVG Free 8.0 is no longer only an anti-virus program, it now includes an integrated anti-spyware and a safe search web browser extension. AVG Free also no longer cripples the scheduler, you can now have it run a full scan whenever you want.
Previously, the only way to get version 8.0 was to pay for it, and for a moment I was very disappointed that AVG stopped offering a free version of their great software. I soon realized that this was not actually the case, so I figured that I would create this post in case others were confused by the upgrade process as well.
Continue reading ‘Upgrading to AVG Free 8′
Recently, a friend of mine asked me to look at his karate instructor’s computer. I went over there and the computer was continuously rebooting. It was running Windows 2000 and MSN as their internet provider. He, like most other computer users, did not have a backup of his software or data. He runs his business off of this computer, which has irreplaceable information from the past 10 years and has a program that manages all of his students, training, schedules, and billing. He said he does not have the CD that the program came on anymore as the last person that worked on his computer destroyed it. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to set the computer up to automatically reboot when it encounters a blue screen of death, rather than show the error message and just let the user reboot on their own. I guess even Microsoft hopes that problems will just fix themselves. “No problem,” I thought, “I will just reboot into safe mode, set it to not reboot on errors, fix the problem, and I will be done.” Yeah right…
Continue reading ‘Would You Trust Microsoft With Your Business?’
