New AVG Annoyance

It’s hard to get too upset with AVG, after all they have been providing us with top-notch virus protection for free these last few years, but the release of AVG version 8 has annoyed a lot of otherwise loyal users. Over the last few weeks popups have been appearing that appear to suggest that AVG was no longer free and to stay protected you had to upgrade to a paid-for version. The fact is AVG 8 is still free for personal use, but of course AVG would rather you purchased the better-specified commercial version – well, you can’t blame them for trying. For the record the free version can be downloaded from http://free.avg.com

The latest problem is a component in AVG 8, called Link Scanner, which has been driving some website owners potty. The idea is when you do a web search it pre-checks all of the links, looking for malicious sites. The trouble is websites get bombarded with fake hits from PCs running AVG 8, clogging up the web with pointless and wasteful traffic. Some users also suggest that the Link Scanners slows their PC down, which could well be the case on older machines.

Anyway, you can disable Link Scanner from AVG’s Control Panel, but this slaps an ugly red exclamation mark over the AVG icon in the System Tray. The simpler solution is to go back to AVG website and download the program again. Run the installer, follow the prompts and this time you will see a Select Startup Type window. Check Add or Remove components, click Next and a few clicks later Component Selection appears. Uncheck Link Scanner, click Next and finish the installation. When you next open the Control Panel Link Scanner will be no more.