Hi, am new here. Have just installed the new AVG 8.0 Free version on a laptop that I will be selling shortly to a friend who is new to computing. Could anyone familiar with this free version tell me - is it automatically updating the new anti-virus files as soon as the machine is switched on, no matter what time of day the daily update had been scheduled for? I have ticked box for auto updating but it would seem you don't always get the little message appearing in corner to tell you that it has done it. Many thanks for any help.

Hi daffydee, and Welcome to CC

The AVG update schedule can be set to update as soon as the machine is turned on if the scheduled update time is missed. For instance, mine is set to update between 5.00 am and 7.00 am every day. If I don't boot up until 8.00 am then the update kicks in as soon as AVG has loaded (actually updating while the system is still booting ).

Open AVG by double clicking the icon in the systray (bottom right of the screen) and go to Tools, Advanced Settings. Look in Appearance to see the settings for update and scanning notifications.

Click the '+' sign next to Schedules, then Program Update Schedule to see the settings for updating - that is where you can choose whether to update immediately if the planned update time has been missed or leave it until the next planned update time.

It wouldn't do any harm to check everything in that panel - it's quite comprehensive. Post back if you are unsure of something in there and we can check it out.

Many thanks, have just been checking all the settings. The free version seems to allow you to just pick one time per day to update and you can also put a tick at "Run on computer start up if task has been missed". I see from the Event History Log that although the time had been set at 5pm daily the laptop updated itself when I switched on machine at around 6.15pm this evening, so would seem to be working as I want it. It didn't show a little balloon message when it updated even though I have ticked all the boxes for balloon messages but no matter, it has updated anyway. Will keep an eye on the event log for a few more days to make sure all ok. I disabled that LinkScanner facility as it slowed down the Google searching terribly. That is definitely the down side of AVG 8 but not complaining as it's easily turned off. Many Thanks.

You're welcome!

I agree the LinkScanner slows things down somewhat but at least we have the option.

Incidentally, the paid-for version allows multiple schedules to be set, but we can always use the manual update option in the free version.

Happy computing