When AVG goes bad

Intermittant but far too frequent STOP blue screen messages seen on Windows XP with AVG 8.0 Internet Security (the one with the firewall component).  Strange thing is, the blue screen often mentions things like IRQL errors, so it may lead you down a faulty hardware path.

Turns out the AVG 8.0 firewall can be the culprit.  An easy way to determine this (apart from disabling the software) is to remove the network connection.  No network=no firewall activity=no blue screen.

Official word from AVG support is to do this (which has worked on all instances we’ve seen so far):

“Please find the attached file ‘delete_ndis.re_’ and save it to your hard drive.
Then please rename it to ‘delete_ndis.reg’ and run the file. When prompted, please
confirm adding of the information to registry.

Please do not restart your computer at this point, and perform the repair AVG
installation by running the AVG installation on your desktop.

Then restart the computer.”

Contents of ‘delete_ndis.reg’ (copy this into notepad and save it with that filename):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AVG\Avg8\FwSetup]
“fwdinf1″=-
“fwdinf2″=-

I haven’t actually found this issue on the AVG support site, so hopefully this helps someone.  Contact AVG support is this doesnt work and they will send you a diagnostic program to generate log files and return to them for further eval.

-SCuffy

Windows Live Messenger & AVG 8

Another tale from the trenches .. that being my own personal experience on my PC!  Windows Live Messenger refusing to sign in, giving an 8100030d error.  Most suggestions include regsrv32 commands to reregister dll files, resetting modems etc, nothing which worked on Vista for me.  Until I remembered that Tony had recently upgraded my software to AVG Anti-Malware SBS Edition version 8.0.87.  So, diabled the Resident Shield – no go.  Went into the Web Shield and unticked the Instant Messaging, MSN Protection – still no go.  Disabled the Web Shield entirely and what do you know …. hello, messenger, you have returned!  Yuck – I’m now off to report this to AVG.

-SCuffy