28 replies to this topic

[Andavari]

Two strikes and AVG Free is out - no third tries on my system:
I noticed for the second time in only about six months that AVG Free had become bloated when I went into 'Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft' and clicked properties. I found out why I was loosing several MB per day even though I hadn't added anything to my system with that much file size only to find out that the Grisoft folder contained over 1.45GB of some files created by AVG Free.

I'm wondering if anyone else has or has had this issue, in any event I've fully switched to AntiVir - well that is if it doesn't start giving update problems, i.e.; not updating I'm going to have to switch to Avast Home Edition which I'm not totally fond of but if it works what the hell.

[JDPower]

Nope, just 8Mb here. That is almost entirely taken up by the incavi.avm file in Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd\backup

Did you check to see what file/s was taking up the majority of that space?

[rridgely]

I haven't had this installed on my computer for any length of time that would possibly show the same problem.
I do however have it installed on my sister's computer and her son's as well. I'll check them both this weekend or something and see. When I did use avg for a long time it was the previous version, but I don't remember it taking up gigs of space.

[Anthony A]

Four machines here with it installed and no issues like that. No issues at all really. Couldn't be happier with AVG. I have read on their forums though of the issue you are talking about. The fix was easy if I remember correctly. Simply delete some of the folders/files. They actually recommend CCleaner on that forum for cleaning AVG. There is also a internal clean option in AVG. Launch AVG Control Center (not Test Center) -> Single click Update Manager Module -> select "settings" tab at bottom of Control Center- > select the "advanced" tab from the pop up dialog-> than select "delete update temp files".

[Andavari]

That's the perplexing thing is it doesn't happen with every AVG installation (remember I'm the guy who changes anti-virus like some people change socks), but having it happen twice it's rather strange. The files I don't remember off hand however they were in that Grisoft folder and all had the $ symbol in the name, each file was at least 40-50 MB in size and there was a horde of them.

At least with AVG off my system I've noticed it actually running smoother.

[JDPower]

Anthony A, on Apr 17 2007, 09:57 PM, said:

There is also a internal clean option in AVG. Launch AVG Control Center (not Test Center) -> Single click Update Manager Module -> select "settings" tab at bottom of Control Center- > select the "advanced" tab from the pop up dialog-> than select "delete update temp files".

Nice one, I suspect that must have been Andavari's problem. I've just done that and that 8MB incavi file (and possibly others) has gone leaving the Grisoft folder at just 600Kb. Perhaps something that could be added to CCleaner for cleaning?

[knotwurthy]

I have less than 8mb on this machine in folder ->All Users ->Application Data-> Grisoft -> avg7upd -> backup
This is a backup of all the definition files. In fact I saw a post on another site that said if you back the following files from the program files dirextory, on a new install, copy them back into the program directory and you are suppost to be up to date with the date of these files. I haven't had a chance to try it.

avi7.avg
incavi.avm
microavi.avg
miniavi.avg
upd_vers.cfg

These files don't match the backup directory, the incavi.avm is the size hog, like JDPower said. It is one of the files listed when AVG does an update. You might try posting a question on AVG's forum.

http://forum.grisoft...forum/index.php

Make sure you search for a similar question, read the FAQ's, and post in the proper area or "Big Al" will lecture you and remove your post. I made that mistake on a post. There are several 1kb history files in the history folder, dating back to the last time a clean install was done. They are not taking up much space, looks like they are for report reviewing. The oldest machine I have AVG on, dating back to 10/2006, is still only 8.1mb in the ->All Users ->Application Data-> Grisoft -> avg7upd -> backup directory. Might be worth a post over there. Good luck, lets us know what happens.

[Anthony A]

JDPower, on Apr 17 2007, 08:51 PM, said:

Nice one, I suspect that must have been Andavari's problem. I've just done that and that 8MB incavi file (and possibly others) has gone leaving the Grisoft folder at just 600Kb. Perhaps something that could be added to CCleaner for cleaning?

I thought CCleaner already cleaned most of that stuff. I never use that AVG temp update file cleaner and I don't have huge files in AVG. I just use CCleaner to clean AVG.

Here is the winapp.ini entry for CCleaner. It cleans AVG pretty well.

[Grisoft AVG 7.0]
LangSecRef=3024
Detect=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Grisoft\Avg7
Default=True
FileKey1=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.log
FileKey2=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin|*.*
FileKey3=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\$history|*.*
FileKey4=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|*.log
FileKey5=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin|*.*
FileKey6=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|$history
FileKey7=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|*.log
FileKey8=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.log
FileKey9=%windir%\Application Data\AVG7\Log|*.log

[Andavari]

JDPower, on Apr 17 2007, 07:51 PM, said:

Nice one, I suspect that must have been Andavari's problem. I've just done that and that 8MB incavi file (and possibly others) has gone leaving the Grisoft folder at just 600Kb. Perhaps something that could be added to CCleaner for cleaning?

Nope that wasn't my problem because I had tried that, it had nothing to do with the updates because at random intervals AVG was creating those files nowhere near the time it was updating.

[Andavari]

Anthony A, on Apr 18 2007, 12:30 AM, said:

Here is the winapp.ini entry for CCleaner. It cleans AVG pretty well.

It doesn't clean those files I found taking 1.45 GB of disk space though.

[knotwurthy]

Andavari, I too try other virus products often. You might be interested in these:

ClamWin is a good open-source supplemental Anti-Virus package for any primary Anti-Virus software packages that do real time scanning (AVG, Anti-Vir, Avast, Bit Defender, etc ). It has no real time protection and should not conflict with those Anti-Virus software packages that do real time scanning. It must be run manually. They update virus databases sometimes multiple times daily.
http://www.filehippo...wnload_clamwin/
http://www.clamwin.com/

Also,

Try F-Protect for DOS and create a bootable CD, with F-Protect on it, to allow scanning seperate from the Windows Operating System. The DOS version is FREE. They still provide updates reguarly. I create a bootable CD/RW every month or so. Just in case the PC starts acting weird. I believe F-Protect for DOS could be installed on a USB thumb drive that is made bootable and used on systems that allow USB booting.
http://www.f-prot.co...s/home_use/dos/
http://www.f-prot.co...aturefiles.html

[JDPower]

JDPower, on Apr 18 2007, 01:51 AM, said:

Nice one, I suspect that must have been Andavari's problem. I've just done that and that 8MB incavi file (and possibly others) has gone leaving the Grisoft folder at just 600Kb. Perhaps something that could be added to CCleaner for cleaning?

Just to add to that, updated AVG today and that 8Mb file is back so that file at least is not something that builds up over time, its just recreated with every update.

[Andavari]

knotwurthy, on Apr 18 2007, 05:24 AM, said:

Andavari, I too try other virus products often. You might be interested in these:

I know of both.

ClamWin is just too damned slow for me to even think of using it again! It's scanning speed is my only real complaint. The lack of a resident shield never bothered me because when I used it I was only using it as a secondary backup antivirus scanner.

F-Protect/F-Prot well I do use F-Prot Antivirus for DOS on my Win98 system, to the point of integrating it into the shell with Win98 (well actually I integrated it years ago). However that old Win98 system has no Internet connection therefore I really won't ever need anything more antivirus-wise on that system. Although F-Prot Antivirus for DOS is discontinued at least the signature files still work with it. The only thing though is F-Prot Antivirus for DOS isn't for usage on NTFS file systems, however it works alright with FAT and FAT32 partitions such as with Win9x/Me systems, and it's rather fast too.

[knotwurthy]

Andavari, on Apr 18 2007, 06:11 PM, said:

ClamWin is just too damned slow ...
F-Prot Antivirus for DOS isn't for usage on NTFS file systems, however it works alright with FAT and FAT32 partitions such as with Win9x/Me systems, and it's rather fast too.

Great points! ClamWin does crawl, maybe why they named it CLAM .
I set up F-Prot on a bootable CD for an old PC that has to use FAT32 for an old VB6 application that is on it. It is used as a secondary scanner only.
Do you know of any other Anti-Virus software that is Execable from a boot CD/DVD/ISB DRIVE, run prior to Windows boot?
How do you like your newest choice of Anti-Virus software?
What Anti-Spyware/s do you like?
Thanks.

[Andavari]

knotwurthy, on Apr 20 2007, 06:40 AM, said:

Do you know of any other Anti-Virus software that is Execable from a boot CD/DVD/ISB DRIVE, run prior to Windows boot?

Avast makes a bootable one via BartCD "I think" however I believe it's commercial software though.

I think Trend Micro may still have a free Boot Disk maker that fits onto several floppies (the last time I used it many years ago I needed seven floppy disks). It would probably take some work to transfer it to CD although I think it's probably possible. I'd image you'd still need a standard Windows bootdisk to bypass the startup files on the hard disk to do a virus scan without the possibility of infected system files causing problems.

Personally I prefer Trend Micro's Sysclean Package, which of course requires a separate pattern file download - lately I've been using it as a secondary malware scanner instead of using ClamWin.

knotwurthy, on Apr 20 2007, 06:40 AM, said:

How do you like your newest choice of Anti-Virus software?

I'm using Avast Home Edition, however I prefer AntiVir! I'm not in love with Avast, which is mostly because of it's GUI design, or lack thereof a good design however that's my only complaint about it. Even the Avast Simple User Interface doesn't thrill me one bit let alone the media player looking skinned interface which is too busy, and too much of a search process to do a simple virus scan.

I just downloaded the newest AntiVir and I'll uninstall Avast a little later on today to see if AntiVir will finally update - although if AntiVir still won't update I'll reluctantly have no choice but to go back to Avast yet again.

knotwurthy, on Apr 20 2007, 06:40 AM, said:

What Anti-Spyware/s do you like?

At the moment and for some time now all I've been using is Ad-Aware SE Personal, Spybot-S&D, and SuperAntiSpyware and I rarely scan with them. I could however trim things down and remove the "nostalgia scanners" ("Ad-Aware, Spybot-S&D") and just use SuperAntiSpyware because I simply don't get any adware or spyware infections, and haven't for about seven or more years now.

Occasionally for the mere hell of it (no other reason really) I'll install and use AVG Anti-Spyware and do a complete scan and it never finds anything!
However I have to uninstall it afterwards because for some reason it makes my PC act funky even if I fully disable it's resident shield/services.

[MajoMo]

Like Andavari I have in "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data" some files $*.AVG, each one with several MB. The dates of the files are from November 2006, when I had a problem with my OS. I needed to repair Windows and AVG Free didn't work (the licence number wasn't accepted; reinstall forbidden). I uninstall AVG with ZSoft Uninstaller and reinstall again AVG. Maybe these files have been created because that. In the AVG'Forum (this post) there are something about this issue.

[Andavari]

You stated yours was in, as did that fellow on the AVG Free forums:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data"

However all those files I found were in:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft"

[knotwurthy]

Andavari, on Apr 20 2007, 09:36 PM, said:

You stated yours was in, as did that fellow on the AVG Free forums:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data"

However all those files I found were in:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft"

I wonder if the difference in the directories has to do with the date of installation. Meaning a different version of the AVG installer was used. The newest installer is 7.5.463. I, however, installed my version back on 10/29/06 and have done online updates ever since then to get to the current version. I have no idea what version of installer I used back then. Might be worth asking the AVG forum. I still don't understand the file size difference between your system and mine and others.

Thanks for the responses on the software. I had to remove AVG Anti-Spyware because it drastically slowed the PC down when online. Using 'Process Explorer' revealed AVG Anti-Spyware was using a large amount of CPU percentage. I'll check on 'SuperAntiSpyware'.

[Andavari]

knotwurthy, on Apr 22 2007, 11:52 AM, said:

I wonder if the difference in the directories has to do with the date of installation.

I don't know, however AVG Free must know of those files because when it's uninstalled it does remove them - at least Grisoft makes very good uninstallers! I reinstalled AVG Free because Avast just annoys me too much and I created a shortcut to that folder that I'll check everyday to make sure those files don't come back. However like I already stated not every AVG Free install creates those files.

[Andavari]

Well AVG Free started doing it again, just today in fact, although CCleaner is able to remove those bloated files.

I'm going to submit an updated AVG cleaning routine to MrG, so hopefully it will all be taken care of in the next CCleaner release so that other people don't have to deal with AVG bloating.