Botched AVG update warning

theheyes · 3 Dec 2010 at 16:45

Just a heads up for AVG users.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=20310

AVG, which claims to have 110 million customers in 170 countries, on Wednesday rolled out a badly botched update.

The update rendered both Windows 7 and Windows Vista inoperable. When booting users are greeted by the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" (BSoD), and the system reboots in an endless cycle of bad computer karma. The mess is apparently caused by an AVG .sys file that is loaded at boot time -- \Windows\System 32\DRIVERS\AVGIDSEH.SYS.

Booting into Safe Mode does not work, as this driver is still loaded, under AVG's default setup.

SiriusB · 3 Dec 2010 at 16:48

Good to see the art of using your customers as testers hasn't died...

Armitage Shanks · 3 Dec 2010 at 16:52

Nasty, thankfully stopped using AVG a while back though as there are better alternatives for free

Memphis · 3 Dec 2010 at 18:16

Not the first time they've done something like this if I recall right?

Anywho, AVG hasn't been a great AV choice for a while now.

Destination · 3 Dec 2010 at 18:24

Memphis said:
Not the first time they've done something like this if I recall right?
.

Was it them?
I thought they did something like this before also.

Fillado · 3 Dec 2010 at 19:27

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/11/avg_false_positive/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/27/avg_itunes_false_positive/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/14/avg_false_positive_flash/

But equally McAfee, Avast, NOD32 and Kaskpersky have had problems in the past. But AVG sure does seem to do it fairly often.

theheyes · 3 Dec 2010 at 20:27

McAfee had a bad one recently. False positives wouldn't be worth posting but for something that might take out someones machine I thought I'd mention.