I decided to give AVG a try mainly because I was having some issues with the old Windows Security Essentials software on my Windows 7 (yes Windows 7) desktop. I also wanted to try something different than the default Windows Security software on another Windows10 household laptop. I had adopted Windows Security software as the default on all my Windows machines, because of the poor experience I had with other Antivirus software, especially around performance and overall experience (some would monopolize the CPU to the point of freezing it). But now that I installed AVG and run it for a couple of days, I am extremely happy with its detection capabilities and performance, as well as the set of features that it comes with (which by the way, I am not sure I am going to end up using them all). So far it hasn’t disappointed.
>>On Windows7
Yes it is an old OS, and its end of life is coming soon, but I have this desktop with plenty of software and configured to the way my family feels comfortable each with their own profile. A few months ago, the default antivirus for this computer starting misbehaving, its service would get disabled frequently. So, very recently, it must have in once such occasion that I (or a family member) introduced some sort of malware into the computer. I was not able to determine what it was, but I knew something was going on, strange processes in the Task Manager would show up, my %LocalAppData% directory would show weird folders, the browser would display annoying adds all over the place, and up to the point that messages would show up to “click here” because your machine was infected. In addition, the machine became extremely slow, especially while browsing. So, all signs of some pest infestation were there.
So I went for the AVG Ultimate. After downloading and installing the AVG Ultimate software, which I did in a normal session not in Safe Mode (I know), I run it for the first time. It started its first scan and got stuck at “checking browser” for over a half an hour (see picture). I had to restart the machine and went onto safe mode where AVG kept crashing. So, I restarted in regular mode, and incredibly everything started to run fine, even the previous antivirus was able to enable its service (which I of course disabled permanently later on). I was able to complete the first scan, it showed no errors.
Now, before installing and running AVG, I would get a lot of annoying pop-ups and adds while browsing. But now, even though I still get some adds, I don’t get any of those threatening pop-ups and the machine is usable again. Web browsing is a breeze, it seems that AVGs script blocker is very good indeed.
Even though it came back clean in the first scan, I decided to do a full scan on the C drive (not very intuitive to get to that option). It took around 50 minutes to scan the almost full C drive, a 256GB SSD in a computer with 8GB RAM and 3.4GHz Phenom AMD Quad core processor.
>>Windows7-Performance
I am using the default configuration; for example, in terms of Settings->Basic protection->Detections, the core defense for blocking malware in real time is set to Medium sensitivity, I perhaps would change it to High sensitivity, but for now seems fine. I haven't made any measurements in performance, before and after this was installed, but so far I don't see any performance loss and on the contrary the machine feels faster. C:\Program Files\AVG\Antivirus\AVGSvc.exe runs all the time and has activity all the time, but it doesn't seem to affect performance that much.
>>Windows10
Setup and first run completed fine on my other HP Windows 10 Laptop. I run a full scan and no threats were found. This laptop is my wife’s primarily, and interestingly, the machine showed a report that it hadn’t updated its Windows in a while (see image).
I am considering replacing the antivirus for the other 3 Windows 10 Laptops we own.
>>Reports
One of the things I want is for an antivirus to tell what it's done. I have yet to find the UI option to get to such reports. I had to navigate to C:\ProgramData\AVG\Antivirus\report and to C:\ProgramData\AVG\Antivirus\log to see some of the reports that were not locked by the AVG processes running to get an idea of what things were done in the past days.
>>Other thoughts
I haven’t used the mobile version for Android, but I’ll be installing the software soon for our cellphones.
AVG has a 1-month trial, but I decided to use my registration code at hand, thinking I would receive 365+30 days, but I just got 367days.
It has several components that look very useful and those become additional reasons to opt for the AVG Ultimate software. The anti-ransomware component seems something nice to have. When I had all that strange behavior my fear was to suddenly get one of those ransomwares and then have my precious (and my family's precious) files taken away. From the description one may think this is just an antivirus software and not a performance tool, but its suggestions to free temp files and the like seem to be a sound way of dealing with potential threats, i.e. potential threats that are downloaded and kept in temp locations. And its VPN component seems something to give it a try for sure.
Some reported threats are not clear, for example, it reports that IP address is visible (not really sure that is the case) and also shows some documents not protected (unsafe). Well, I haven’t acted on them.
