I had been using AVG for some time, but I have been moving over to Avast! for several reasons.  AVG isn’t horrible.  It’s just that I think Avast! is currently doing a better job.  All of this aside I want to report a problem that came up recently in case this is useful to anyone still using AVG.

I was helping a user with a Vista machine which was running AVG for viral protection.  The user was not able to download or save files.  That’s not exactly true.  If I saved a Web page, the main file would not save though the folder with the associated images, js files, and so forth would be saved.  But the usual method of downloading an installer and saving that file to the desktop was a complete no-go.

Both Opera and Internet Explorer were able to save files as expected.  And yet Firefox failed silently.

In short, Firefox behaved as though it was downloading the file correctly.  But then the file wasn’t getting to the save location.

I disabled all plugins; I removed all toolbars; and I followed some interesting Mozilla hacks (here and here).  All to no avail.

Since Firefox acted as though it was performing the download and save correctly I thought it must be either the firewall or the virus protection.  Kill each and see which succeeds.

Needless to say, I found myself wanting to remove AVG.  So I gutted AVG using Revo Uninstaller and all was well.

I loaded Avast! onto his machine and now he’s as happy as a monk in October.

Cheers!