AVG Anti-Virus plus Firewall
(Beta) - a new firewall from a trusted sourceI recently got a tip from Chachazz at
Temerc. AVG has a new product out. Naturally I rushed out to get a
copy. I've used AVG free anti-virus for nearly two years now with no
complaints. Now they have added a firewall to their already excellent
anti-virus program. Before I installed it I made sure to completely
uninstall the old AVG free and my old version of ZoneAlarm firewall. I
downloaded the 16mb beta version and chose the custom install feature. I
typically choose not to install the email scanner in AVG. If you use
Outlook Express or any other typical email client it's a good idea to
install the email scanner. If you access your email at an online webmail
site, then make sure you choose the custom installation like I did. The
installation proceeded perfectly and a short while later I was back on the
web with a full firewall and virus protection enabled. If you have used a
firewall with outbound protection, then this new AVG firewall will seem
very familiar to you. I cannot say how well the firewall works but I can
say that it's not giving me any problems. I just hope that AVG offers a
version of the firewall for free just like they have always done for their
anti-virus program. If they do that, I'm sure they will become the
protection suite that the masses of freeware loving surfers love to
download. Thanks for the cool tip Chachazz. I'll let everyone know when
AVG releases this firewall from beta.
UPDATE
Last week I reviewed AVG and it's newly
added firewall. No sooner than the review had gone out, I started having
some problems with the firewall. It was occasionally blocking web access.
I tried tweaking it but nothing seemed to help. I finally tried
uninstalling it and the uninstall failed twice. Finally after reinstalling
it and booting into safe mode, I was able to uninstall it properly. Below
is a portion of a letter I received from Randiroo. Thanks for the
information.
... finally had to uninstall AVG+fw, it was
messing up too many prgms, first WinPatrol, TrayManager next,
FreshDownload, then I couldn't update some Security prgms, all went to
hell in a basket! Luckily I used Total Uninstall, but even then there were
some reg entrys I had to delete manually. After using Add/Remove in
control panel TU picked up 214 reg entries that uninstall mssed, I picked
up another 33 on manual reg clean + a folder in Windows/Application Data.
Whew, finally am on a reinstall of prgms that messed up.
Conclusion: AVG's firewall doesn't appear to be ready for the
general public's use yet. It's a beta program and you can expect problems.
I always try to give a program enough time for a good review but this time
I didn't wait long enough. I apologize to anyone who had a bad time of it
if they tried it based on my review. I'll try the firewall again
after AVG has worked on it more.
Quote from the website - With computer viruses, Trojan horses,
worms, and other forms of malicious program becoming more prevalent, the
risk to your computer is amplified. To protect themselves, millions of
users rely on Grisoft and its award-winning line of AVG Anti-Virus
software. We are proud to announce the latest addition to the AVG product
family: AVG Anti-Virus plus Firewall. The firewall gives you control of
communication between your computer and the world outside your computer as
well as providing protection from hackers and data thieves.