Hi,

I know you can turn off the AVG Control Center from the program, but I believe it leaves one AVG process running. I need to turn off AVG completely to uninstall and reinstall ZoneAlarm, but have been told not to kill that remaining process in Task Manager, but to turn it off the proper way. I just don't know what that way is...

What is the proper/best way to completely turn off AVG Free so I can uninstall/reinstall ZA?

At what point would I turn it off completely?

And while we're talking about AVG, anyone know the best settings for that in general? I just have it set to whatever the default is, but if it's anything like ZA, that's probably not the best settings...

Thanks!

I was reading the AVG forums and the recommendation is (here's 3 responses) open resident shield and deselect all the scanning options

The control centre isn't the virus shield. Go to the resident shield module in the AVG control centre, open it and deselect all the scanning options.

Just open AVG control centre, open resident shield and deselect all the scanning options. This effectively disables it

I think it's much easier to disable all the scanning options in the resident shield from control center. Then when you're done, you just check them again. No need to reboot. Also if you do it this way, the AVG icon turns gray and the resident shield box in the control center turns red, reminding the user that AVG is disabled.

Killing services in task manager might have unexpected consequences.

Several members here have used the uninstaller described in the text below successfully.

http://www.greenwood.iwarp.com/sgcomputer.html
Copied from link above:
Trouble installing or updating Zone Alarm in XP:
If you are having trouble updating or installing the Zone Alarm firewall, with error messages such as "Validation failed for..." any number of dlls, or that it can't shut down the True Vector Monitor, etc., here is the solution. First, if you were already using Zone Alarm, uninstall it. Second, there's a mess of files and folders you must delete. ZoneLabs gives lengthy instructions on how to do that, but to make it easy, I wrote a simple command file. Download and unzip the CMD file zfix.zip, then run it. It'll clean all traces of any old installation from your system, and you can now run a fresh installation with no problem.
To clarify why this happens, the explanation is simple. Uninstalling Zone Alarm in the normal fashion does not remove all the files and folders. When a new version of ZA is applied, XP prevents old files from being replaced by new files because of certificate verification mismatches. Thus, ALL old files have to be manually removed. This doesn't affect the computer or registry in any way. When the new ZA is installed, registry entries for the old installation are still valid as they simply point to newer versions of the exact same files in the exact same pathways.
WARNING: Zfix is an easily edited command file. If you downloaded it anywhere but here, you may want to verify it by right-clicking it, selecting the "Edit" option, and comparing it to this text:

rd /s /q C:\"Program Files"\"Zone Labs"
rd /s /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zonelabs
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsconfig.xml
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsdata.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsdatant.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsinit.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsmonapi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vspubapi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsregexp.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsutil.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vswmi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsxml.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zlcomm.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zlcommdb.dll
end
Any other text should be removed.

Thanks for the replies!

boopme -- Gotcha there. But after doing that, should I also probably "Quit AVG Control Center"?

And I noticed that in that Resident Shield, "scan infectable files" is chosen, not "scan all files" -- is it better to have scan all files?

Did you happen to see any instructions for proper set-up of AVG, or are the defaults upon installation the recommended settings?

buddy215 -- I'm slightly nervous about downloading and running programs like this. But I'm guessing I can do manually what this little program is doing...? What do "rd", "/s", and "/q" mean?

rd /s /q C:\"Program Files"\"Zone Labs"
rd /s /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zonelabs

What are these two doing? Just Deleting the folders?

del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsconfig.xml
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsdata.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsdatant.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsinit.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsmonapi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vspubapi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsregexp.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsutil.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vswmi.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\Vsxml.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zlcomm.dll
del /q C:\WINDOWS\system32\zlcommdb.dll

And are these just deleting these files?

Is any of this doing anything special, or is it the same as if I went to that folder and deleted the files myself?

Thanks again!

Here's the AVG manual(.pdf format)
AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Edition
You can quit it but its disabled and you'll have to remember to turn it back on. The greyed icon will be gone.

That setting in the Resident is because the resident is live. You could change,but I think it will slow things down.

25 Tips on using AVG (.pdf format)

1a. Thanks for the links! Are these things available on-line as webpages by any chance?

1b. Would this be the correct manual for AVG Free 7.5 here:
http://download.grisoft.cz/filedir/doc/AVG...ee/User_manual/
...instead of the link you have? (I'm guessing maybe the you one have is for the paid version?)

2. So you mean if you make the Resident scan all files, it'll slow things down a lot...?

Thanks!