Grisoft has a new version of their virus scanner out, AVG 8.0. I spent a bit of time installing it today on my laptop and found a big annoyance: by default it actively scans all of the web pages you visit and every link on those pages for “malicious” code. The intent is nice- make sure I don’t go to a web page that will infect my computer. BUT I don’t like it one bit. It slows down and clutters up my web experience by modifying the pages I am on with little green check marks and pop-ups to let me know the link is safe. In addition I use Firefox with no flash, no java, and no active-x controls. This severely limits the way malicious code can run.
How to fix it? First, uninstall AVG 8.0 and reboot. Then you need to run the installer from a command line with these arguments:
c:avg_free_stf_en_8_100a1295.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
Obviously if you have a different installer executable version, use that. This will start up like the normal installer and once installed, it will update and scan just like the full version- only without “SafeSurf” and “SafeSearch”.
Hope this helps.