AVG Network Edition seems slower than Norton Anti-Virus!

[JonRB]

Got a bit of a puzzler here.

I've recently migrated our machines at home from various versions of Norton Anti-Virus to AVG Internet Security Network Edition. The machines are all running XP Pro connecting as domain workstations to a domain server running NT 4.0 Server. Internet access is via an ADSL router on the network.

Both wife and son have reported that their machines now run MUCH slower than before, with internet access particularly heavily hit - my wife to the extent that she couldn't run her web-based business properly as a page refresh was taking as much as a minute rather than a few seconds. Obviously she tried a shutdown and restart, but this didn't clear it. Uninstalling AVG as a quick fix instantly sorted it, which does seem to point the finger of accusation at AVG.

Now I was given to understand that AVG had a smaller-than-aver rage memory and resource footprint which was why I chose it, but this seems to be barrelling towards a show-stopper which is a bit of an arse as I bought a 5-user 2-year licence at a cost of almost £200.

Does anyone have any suggestions or help they can give, please?

Cheers
Jon

[jamieboy]

Is Norton completely removed? I saw a similar problem where Norton had been replaced with McAfee on three machines, but it seemed there was enough Norton left for the two engines to be interfering with each other.

[JonRB]

Good call. I'll have a sniff around the registry tonight and see what I can find.

[ThePassenger]

JonRB said:

Good call. I'll have a sniff around the registry tonight and see what I can find.

Also go to the Symantec site and grab all the uninstall / removeal utilities for the product you can find. It's a complete swine to uninstall.

[victormeldrew]

I've got a 10-user network licence for AVG. I kind of gave up on the network side of it after about the fifth time it corrupted its own database; I now lust let all my clients update direct from AVG. For the negligible bandwidth hit its not worth the hassle for five or six computers.

The default setting for AVG appears to be to do a full scan every time you switch on (or daily at least) which seems excessive to me - and the clients can get pretty slow during a full scan. I set mine to do a full scan weekly, and just do the updates daily. One one of my computers I was using Outlook Express and the "generic" AVG email scanner, and that is pitifully slow.

Other than those issues AVG seems to be unobtrusive.

I'd echo comments about removing Symantec - it took several RegEdit sessions to finally rid my server of their network product. It doesn't help that they have registry entries variously as Norton and Symantec, it really is a biatch to get rid of. Some AntiFungus software required I think

[GregE240]

There are some v good articles on how to completely uninstall Symantec Antivirus up on t'internet.

[JonRB]

Excellent - thanks chaps. Exactly the kind of advice I was hoping to receive.