Small Problems After Installing AVG + Spybot

[bartboy9891]

1) I recently downloaded the newest versions of AVG Free antivirus and Spybot S/D and I love their thoroughness. However, immediately after downloading these, I noticed that I'm getting more popups in Firefox than I was getting before. It's the usual ads for fake anti-virus software etc, but now they are noticeably more frequent. Is there another free program out there I could use to get rid of these annoying popups?


2) Another problem I'm having is my laptop refuses to stay in hibernation or standby mode. I'm running Windows XP and everything was going fine until I installed the two aforementioned programs. Normally, I would close the laptop and it would go into standby mode and stay that way. Now it boots up again after an hour or two while the laptop is still closed. Even more annoyingly, it will also take itself out of hibernation mode and start up. I'm assuming that one of (or both) the programs is constantly updating itself and is forcing the computer out of either of the modes to carry out the update. Does anyone have any solutions/suggestions to this headache?

 

[xicedlovexoxo]

Well, as far as I know, AVG updates itself very regularly - every time my internet craps out a little AVG pop-up saying it couldn't connect to the update server comes up, so my guess is that's what's causing the computer to come out of standby mode and such. You can turn this feature off by going into the Update Manager Component and un-selecting Start Automatic Updates, but if you want the best, up-to-date protection from AVG, I suggest leaving it on and just setting the updates for a specific time (however, this may be useless seeing as it tries to update itself more often) unless you can do well on remembering to manually update it often or remember to turn it back on when you're using the computer.

As for the increased amount of ads, I have both AVG and Spybot and I haven't got a problem with popups. As far as I know, Firefox should block popups on its own, and AVG comes with some popup blocker feature of some sort (I think), so I don't know why you'd be getting more with AVG and Spybot. Spybot also doesn't constantly run as far as I know.

I can, however, suggest something that may help with the ads/popups problem. Windows uses something called a HOSTS file,

The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory (cache) at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local (your) machine. Another feature of the HOSTS file is its ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, providing the entry exists.

You can find more about the HOSTS file, how to use it, and a download of an up-to-date HOSTS file and such here.

If you don't want to modify the HOSTS file, then here's a Firefox specific addon: Adblock Plus. Looks pretty spiffy, and seeing as its a recommended addon, it'll probably work well and not do the opposite of what its supposed to or fettle with your computer or anything.

Picking through the Privacy & Security section of Firefox's addons may find you some more popup blockers suitable to your needs.

Hopefully this helped at least some, I'm not a computer guru but I do have experience with these things so I thought I'd stop being a useless computer-chair-potato and help out for once.

 

[73GMCSprint]

The "antivirus" popups sound a bit like the Vundo bug. I've been seeing it a lot lately. SUPER AntiSpyware (and a little editing of the startup list in msconfig) has done a pretty good job of getting rid of that one for me.

 

[bartboy9891]

Thanks for the advice, the popups are just about nonexistent now .

However the standby/hibernate problem still exists. I turned off the automatic updates for AVG but the computer still refuses to stay in standby and hibernation mode. Also the newest version of Spybot does run constantly in the background. I looked around in the settings for Spybot and there doesn't seem to be any automatic scan or update that's going on without me knowing. I tried just closing both programs before hibernation/standby, but that didn't work either. What else could be causing this?

 

[xicedlovexoxo]

Well, my computer will sometimes randomly come out of stand-by, but as far as I know its just my borked mouse which sometimes, if left to its own devices, moves on its own.

Though if I were to take a stab at guessing what the problem with your stand-by could be, I'd say your computer doesn't wanna go to bed, just like a naughty 5-year-old.

Okay, seriously? I'm not sure, but watch closely what processes and programs your computer is running when it pops out of stand-by again. It could be running something else without your knowledge.