Chardonnay and the Security Suite!

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AVG2011 All-in-all, the installations went well, but I do believe that there is an unwritten ‘law’ – probably called ‘The Law of Sod’, that kicks-in just when you are least expecting it!!!

Our story begins…I downloaded the 2011 version of the new AVG Security Suite with a view to sequentially installing it on all the PCs here. With five PCs in the house, that’s a couple of hours work, at least. After installing it on the Laptop, I guess I should have stopped there, but the installation went really smoothly, so I did the same with my Netbook. Success!!!
Open-mouthed smile  Open-mouthed smile  Open-mouthed smile
The real challenge was going to be the seven-year-old PC, upstairs, running XP. In recent years, it had become very sluggish. Result? No problem, as this install went perfectly too!

Maybe I shouldn’t have opened that bottle of Chardonnay (Tom and Julie got it for me, for my birthday – thank-you both!!!), but somewhere between glass 1 and glass 2, full of confidence (and wine), I started the installation on Ann’s PC. It’s also running XP and another PC that’s getting on a bit, but it’s pretty reliable nonetheless. I double-clicked on the install and left it to do its thing and watched a bit of TV.
Martini glass  Martini glass  Martini glass
On returning to the PC…disaster!!!! The PC had hung whilst trying to uninstall the previous version of AVG. The whole PC had locked up, and even repeated presses of Ctrl-Alt-Del failed to free up the machine. Nothing left then, but to switch off the PC and reboot. What could be the harm in that??

Well, as it turned out, plenty! For some unexplained reason on re-booting, various files had become corrupted and even though there was no anti-virus and firewall running, the PC refused to connect to the internet!
Steaming mad  Steaming mad  Steaming mad
Fortunately, I was able to use Windows’ System Restore feature and ‘wind-back’ the PC to yesterday. On rebooting, the PC appeared normal, so I took the decision (helped by my 3rd glass of Chardonnay) to try again and reinstall AVG. This time however, I downloaded the really useful free utility by AVG, that completely removes earlier versions of AVG. Get it here.

Here we go again then, with the reinstallation. Success! Twenty minutes later, AVG was working fine on Ann’s PC. Phew!!! And just three hours later, all the PCs (apart from my main Dell machine – I’ll sort that tomorrow!), everything was now behaving as it should.

The moral of this story?
    A single successful installation doesn’t prove anything 
    It’s best to remove AVG, before installing a newer version
    Take regular backups of system-critical files
    Don’t drink Chardonnay whilst installing software! 🙂

And what about the software itself? Well, it seems faster when scanning; takes less memory; and virus-updates seem to take less time.

I got there in the end!!! …now where’s that bottle of Chardonnay?
Winking smile  Winking smile  Winking smile

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