My AVG is broken: Please help me I love my AVG

[KatyMac]

Help

It's broke
It's been broke for a week or 2

I now have time to fix it - but I don't know how

I am very sad

I don't know what you mean by broken but I was having problem with AVG and Word documents, if that is the case you need to uninstall and then re-install using custom and unselecting the microsoft components choice.
If that's not the problem you need to tell us how broken.

The DNS cache won't empty/clear

I've doe the ipconfig thing and flushed it - but it doesn't help

AVG free?

Read the limitations and download the latest version.

Uninstall the broken one from Windows Control Panel (if you can't find that, use Windows Help to search for 'remove software') then install it from the new download.

No I paid lots for it & have been running it for months

I have a license for 3 computers it works on 2 but not the third

KatyMac, what you say about the DNS cache doesn't make sense.

It is possible that your machine is infected with a Trojan that is causing that message to appear.

If I were you I would download a trial version of some paid for AV software and run that. If it finds anything on your PC, then you will know that free protection is not good enough for you.

Sorry, cross-post.

Have you run a full scan with AVG? Particularly a rootkit scan (fiddling with the hosts file which affects DNS resolution is something a rootkit might do).

If that comes back clean, where are you getting this message about the DNS cache?

The DNS cahce message comes up when I try a full scan

Ouch, looks to me like something bad is in there and is preventing you scanning to find it.

Can you run ipconfig from the command prompt again, using this line:

ipconfig /displaydns > c:\dns.txt

This will create a file which shows how your PC is resolving domain names in your c:\ directory. Have a look at that file, or use this pastebin to let me have a look without posting it here.

I will - I am just running spybot on all of them - just to see if it picks anything up

We have progress the error message only comes up when I try to update it

Yes, that's why I suspect hosts file poisoning - something has put an entry in there that makes your PC think the IP address of updater.avg.com (or whatever it is) is something that it isn't.

Strange that AVG doesn't use a fixed IP for updates though, to avoid exactly this problem.

Are there any spaces in that ?

It isn't doing much

Well I've used your little pastebin thingie.....maybe??

ROFL, that command should have given a long stream of output - if I had known it was that short I wouldn't have suggested the paste bin!

Now, your problem is beginning to get me outside my comfort zone, but that is always interesting, so here goes.

Click on the Start menu and in the start box type 'services.msc' (without the quotes of course) to run that program. It will probably ask you to click again to confirm you want to do that.

After a while, a list of services that are running on your computer will come up. This makes for interesting reading (for a geek), but the one we are interested in is 'DNS Client'. That should have a status of 'Started', but I bet it is not showing that on your PC.

Make sure the 'Extended' tab at the bottom is selected, click on 'DNS Client' and then click 'Start'. If it was already started, click 'Restart' for luck.

Now that has sorted why you couldn't display the cache or reset it, but I don't think that will have sorted the AVG problem. You could try a reboot now, but I still think uninstalling and reinstalling it is the way to go there.

If the DNS Client wasn't started, your hosts file will have been ignored anyway, so don't bother posting it .

Do you mean the run box on the start menu or something else?

There doesn't seem to be a start option or any way to change it from disabled

OK I went into properties & changed it to manual then I started it

OK so now you have lots of crap info on your pastebin

Hmmmm...

Now there is an entry in there for update.grisoft.cz at IP address 212.96.161.238 which seems to check out OK (grisoft=AVG).

So there is nothing stopping AVG from connecting AVG to its update server* - it must be AVG itself that is broken. All the stuff about DNS caching was a red herring, although it is good to have that fixed now (you should get a slight speed increase on the internet).

Uninstall and reinstall AVG.

• uber-geeky note - well alright, someone could be ARPpoisoning your ISP, but you would really know about it if that was the case

OK

OK you fixed it

Why is the answer always turn it off then turn it on again
or
Uninstall & reinstall

Sorry - I just realised I forgot to say thank you

I do apologise - I don't think I am normally that ungrateful

So to reiterate

THANK YOU very muchly

That's OK - I have been away from MN four a couple of days until now anyway so I would never have noticed if you hadn't said!