AVG free version question

This morning AVG anti-virus program alerted me that I had a virus...some sort of Trojan although I don't remember the name (unfortunately). It asked if I wanted to delete the file and I did so. Now, however, when I go to the virus vault to try to ascertain the name of the virus, the vault is empty and the results of the virus scan from this morning show no viruses. Did I have a virus or what? Why isn't there a record in the AVG program of having deleted the virus? Is it possible that AVG did not delete the virus and that my computer is still infected? Thanks in advance for your time.

I never used AVG so this is only a guess but is deleting the infected file different that quarantining the infected file. If you delete it, it's gone (Poof), if you quarantine it, it's moved to the vault.

Just a thought.

I would agree with that observation except for the fact that when I go back and get the itemized details of the virus scan it says that the virus scan was successful at the scheduled time, and that no viruses were detected. Makes no sense.

Are you looking at "display list of detections and messages"?

Was it killed by a full scan, or the interactive one?...............I don't think the interactive scan produces a log?

:)

You're right, it should be listed in the log. I don't have the free version, but I do have the paid version and that's how it works for mine. I'm not on my computer to actually look into it, at school, but I will when I get in. If we can't figure anything out, I'll contact AVG and get some assistance.

BTW, I had the free Version a while back and both are pretty much identical.

warriorfan808

hi jerichoholic,

Just update your AVG and then run a full scan and see if it shows up.

Eg ;)

Hi Egaladeist, I've run the program again several times both in normal mode and in "safe" mode. Nothing. Guess what I'm trying to figure out is what the virus could have done and the sort of exposure I had while the virus was on the machine. I know that the previous day I had logged into a website that requires me to use my SSN as a log-in (I know, stupid, but that's the Govt for you.) So if this thing was a keystroke logger or something like that, could it have transmitted that info? Would the anti-virus program have allowed the virus to remain on the machine for any extended period of time?

On a related note, I have the sygate firewall and it never alerted me to some .exe program that I didn't recognize trying to send out info....not sure if it would if a virus was trying to send out info or not.

Well, to answer part of your question, my experience of AVG free is that if it cannot delete or quarantine a nasty it will tell you, and it will certainly detect it a second time round if it is still there. Now, I am not saying that it made a perfect job, but it must have killed enough of the "active ingredients" to make your machine safe.

I am not sure but I think that mine only shows stuff it couldn't do anything about? but I always set mine to "heal" then "quarantine" if that doesn't work.

I would suggest that you might try an online scanner like Trend Micro's "Housecall" as a second opinion and change your AV settings to "quarantine".

As you don't know what the virus was you cannot realistically assess your "exposure". Like you may have had it for five days, but what was it doing?

I will try to look on a labrat machine tomorrow and figure out what it does with stuff it thinks that it has fixed.

:)

Thank you, nihil. Appreciate the time you've taken.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you jerichoholic. AVG does keep a list of all viruses found in it's test log. We have a computer on our network that had a few virus that were found and were either healed; quarantined or deleted; all still listed in Test Results.

If you want more information about your Test Results, go to the Test Results page; highlight the day you're wondering about and then click the small button on the bottom left of your screen that says, "Details".

This option will give you details on the following:
Start Time
End Time
Launch Method
Scanning Result
Report Status
Scanned
Infected
Cleaned
Moved to Vault
Deleted
Errors

I don't have the free version, but I use to have it and it seems exactly the same. I'm pretty sure you'll still have this option. Hope this helps you.

warriorfan808

Warriorfan808 - And therein lies the problem. I do all of that - go to the details of the particular test, any test - and it lists no infections. Ever. Including today when I got the pop-up notification that I had a virus and was asked if I wanted to delete it. So I'm confused as to what the heck happened.

That's strange man. It works for me. Sorry I wasn't able to help. I'll toy with it a bit more and contact Tech help about the problem. Who knows, the feature might not work with the Free Version or something like that. I do know that they are from seperate installation files.

hi jerichoholic

i had some bad experience with the free ver. of AVG this summer so i switched over to Nortron for the very reason that it gives the Quarantine option,also AVG was not able to detect some viruses which Norotron was later able to do.
or else go for the paid ver. which will have more features.

Hi Guys,

I have had another look and it seems that AVG will record a detection as part of a user induced or scheduled scan (partial or whole). It does not seem to record detections "on the fly", that is, those that are detected by it's interactive scanner. I can understand this, as it is logically saying "I stopped that one before it got in"?

jerichoholic , was the scan you ran in Windows "normal" mode?, if so, I might have an explanation...................

AVG is a rather reactive system, it will spot a virus as soon as you open a file, but is not that good at spotting them whilst dormant.............this is not a criticism, as they are not a threat in that state?

I suspect that your scan was in normal mode and the scan opened something with a virus.........the online scanner runs in normal mode (it cannot run in "safe"?) and spotted this (online scanners have seniority here :D ) sooooooooooooo.....................the online scanner killed it ( and it does not log "kills") and the scheduled/induced scan did not get a response because the virus had been "killed", so it "Charlie Mike'd"???????????????and you get no log message from it.

This is all buried so deep in the applications logic that I cannot prove it other than by a "black box" analysis?

I would set your defaults to "quarantine"..............then you will know what hit you...............ones that did not get in/did not run are not a problem, from an antivirus viewpoint , although they are from a general systems security view?

Please let me know if you would like me to experiment further..............it might take several days :(

Cheers :)

I did run the first scan in "normal" mode. Your analysis makes sense (guess we'll never really know) especially since I received notification immediately after starting the computer for the day...I've read that some viruses "boot" every time you start Windows so that's probably when AVG caught it.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time and I sincerely hope you are correct that the virus was merely dormant and AVG caught it before it could gather any information and transmit. Which brings up another question: would Sygate personal firewall allow a virus program to transmit information out without asking the user if it's okay? Seems to ask me just about every other time something tries to go out with some sort of transmission.

Thanks again for the assistance.

Nihil, how do you set it up to quarantine? I mean, I've been searching the options and haven't come across it. Under the Advanaced Interface, I checked the Programming Settings and then the Virus Vault tab and noticed that by default, "Automatic File Deletion" was unchecked. Sounds like the same thing as quarantine, but just checking to make sure.