After many years I had to ditch AVG Free. I got TotalAV but after install, it says "Real-Time Protection Is Disabled"

[sonoferu]

Way back when I got my first PC I installed AVG Free. Never had a virus. Couple of years ago they started putting up pop-ups all day, urging me to get the paid version. I just learned to ignore them. Then last week I started getting popups saying "Your subscription will end in <x> days" I saw no way out so I looked online for "Best Free Antivirus", and ended up at "Antivirus Software Guide", https://www.antivirussoftwareguide.com/best-free-antivirus. I didn't know if they were good at recommending, but they had lots of names I knew, and good old AVG was #8 out of their Top Ten.

Their #1 is TotalAV, so I downloaded that one. Why not? I dont know better myself, so ....

I uninstalled AVG, installed TotalAV, and then was shocked to see one of their first popup messages saying that "Real-Time Protection Is Disabled", and I would have to buy the real version to get that.

What does that mean? Isn't it just what it sounds like? I always thought AVG was checking out any new file that came down, before it landed on the hard drive. Is that wrong? Did it only just scan the hard drive on schedule and detect bad files?

IF AVG only scanned and caught bad files that had been on the HD until caught, it seems to have worked fine. I'm not aware that I ever got infected with anything. Once every few months I would see a message popup saying such and such file was caught, and if an infected file was sitting there for a while, wouldnt it have caused a problem before getting detected?

Thanks.

 

[sonoferu]

Actually I found the review of AVG on that website does say that AVG has real-time protection.

"Real-Time protection runs in the background and monitors your system continuously, blocking malware before it gets on your hard-drive. "

 

[sonoferu]

Reading some of the other reviews there, I found that Avast has bought AVG. And the Avast review says the exact same thing that AVG Free does

Real-Time protection runs in the background and monitors your system continuously, blocking malware before it gets on your hard-drive.

So I'm gonna kick TotalAV out and go to avast

 

[Fallen Kell]

Avast has just as many popups, so don't expect to get away from them unless you have a paid subscription (and even then, you might get some if you don't have a subscription that enables EVERYTHING).

That being said, I have used them for years and it has prevented tons of viruses over that time. The live scanning of files downloaded/accessed is great as well as their web protection to block malicious sites/scripts.

 

[mikeymikec]

Huh. I've seen loads of customers scammed by dodgy pop-ups into installing TotalAV. I presume they also do that TotalAdBlock product that I've also seen scammily installed on plenty of occasions. I wouldn't trust either as far as I can throw them.

IMO just use Windows Defender for AV.