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Tony K AntiVirus Free full system scan, Java, 'CCleaner' trojan horse
My OS is Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1, a 64-bit OS. I have AVG AntiVirus Free.
I run a full computer scan every Sunday evening. Since last week, my system has been slow, but I’m not sure exactly when that started. Certain web pages in particular have been slow to load and respond.
A full AVG AntiVirus Free scan of my computer has been taking the better part of an hour at least, with most time spent on the ‘Viruses & other malware’ portion of the scan. But last night, the full scan seemed to take less than 2 minutes, and possibly less than 1.
Having heard that Java may compromise the safety of one’s system, for some time now, I’ve been ignoring pop-up prompts to upgrade to the latest version.
Questions: has AVG AntiVirus Free been recently changed to perform its full computer scan in much less time? As the full scan now takes a small fraction of the time it has been taking, I’m wondering if it’s still scanning as thoroughly as before. I’m also wondering if I should be upgrading Java every time Java upgrade pop-up messages prompt me to.
Lastly, after AVG AntiVirus Free stopped fixing Performance Issues (AVG AntiVirus still does, but on a paid platform), I’ve relied on CCleaner for that. I only run it once in a while, though its pop-ups also appear often prompting me to upgrade to their latest version. Some weeks ago, a full AVG AntiVirus Free scan detected a CCleaner trojan horse on my system, which I then deleted. Since then, I have been wary of upgrading or running CCleaner. Any comments?
Thanks.
I understand the situation. Please repair AVG Internet security/ AVG Protection http://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=How-to-repair-AVG from the control panel and run the scan after restarting your PC.
Thanks for your response. I did as you suggested. But still, a full scan is taking much less time than it used to. The ‘Browser add-ons’ portion takes about 10 seconds (even before, it didn’t take long), and both the ‘Viruses & other malware’ and ‘Performance issues’ portions take a combined total of about 50 seconds. The full scan is now taking around a minute. Previously, the ‘Viruses & other malware’ portion alone took at least the better part of an hour.
There have been no changes to my system (no installs or uninstalls of programs or software or apps).
Tony
I appreciate your effort in resolving this issue. The issue is might be because of old/previous AVG traces or any corrupted AVG files. At this time, I request you to remove AVG completely along with any previous traces using the AVG clear tool/AVG Remover tool and then do a fresh installation of AVG Free Antivirus 2017. This will ensure that none of the previous traces of AVG are left on your computer and you have an updated version. Please follow the instruction ( http://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=How-to-troubleshoot-issues-after-upgrade-to-the-latest-AVG-antivirus-product ) to run AVG Remover tool and AVG Clear tool. After computer reboots, please follow the instruction (http://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=Download-and-install-AVG-AntiVirus-Free) to download/install AVG Free Antivirus.
Best regards,
Alok.
I did as you suggested, but the computer scan is still taking around a minute. But I think I know what’s happened. It seems AVG AntiVirus FREE has recently been changed yet again:
The button on the dashboard that I have been clicking to start a scan (‘SCAN COMPUTER’) used to start a ‘full scan’ and not a ‘quick scan’. But now, it starts a ‘quick scan’. In order to start a ‘full scan’, I now have to click on the cogwheel to the right of the ‘SCAN COMPUTER’ button on the dashboard. This opens the ‘Other Scans’ window. The options in the window include ‘Computer Scan’ which is now a ‘quick scan’, and ‘Deep Scan’ which is now the ‘full computer scan’.
Are such changes to AVG AntiVirus Free announced anywhere in your AVG Support Community Forum?
Thanks.
Tony
I appreciate your efforts in trying to fix the issue.
It is true that the Scan Computer runs a Quick Scan on your computer, however, the changes are not announced or published in our Community Forum.
But you can check if an Update has been released by going to the About Tab in AVG Anti Virus>Menu>About.
Regarding my initial observation that my system had recently been slow, that was in general, not just with reference to certain web pages. I have both Firefox and Internet Explorer installed on my system, and use both. Well, I started my Task Manager and the Processes tab showed a few firefox.exe processes running even with the browser closed, and collectively using the largest amounts of memory by far, with my CPU Usage at or close to 100%! A Google search for 'what does firefox.exe do even when firefox is closed' included the results at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1172713 and at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1147868. I followed the steps at the second link to disable e10s.
This seems to have made a difference.
If you have Firefox and your system seems to run slower than it has in the past, the problem might not be browser add-ons or possible malware or hacking or whatever; the problem might be Firefox e10s.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Alok.