AVG Startup Issue

[David E. Ross]

Windows XP SP1
AVG Free 2016 (x32) 16.131.7998
AVG Zen 1.113.2.50020

This is my wife's PC. Yes, it is old; and Windows XP is no longer
maintained. However, it still does what my wife needs done.

When the PC is booted up -- either cold or warm -- a Windows Explorer
window opens for [C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\AVG],
showing folder AV. There is no purpose in this, but I am not able to
stop it. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to prevent this annoyance?

--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, who was quoting someone else:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and
alternative truths.

[VanguardLH]

"David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.invalid> on 2017/02/05 wrote:

> Windows XP SP1
> AVG Free 2016 (x32) 16.131.7998
> AVG Zen 1.113.2.50020
>
> This is my wife's PC. Yes, it is old; and Windows XP is no longer
> maintained. However, it still does what my wife needs done.
>
> When the PC is booted up -- either cold or warm -- a Windows Explorer
> window opens for [C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\AVG],
> showing folder AV. There is no purpose in this, but I am not able to
> stop it. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to prevent this annoyance?

Probably a startup program that was uninstalled but only partially so
the startup item was left behind. Since the path is to an AVG folder,
did she try to uninstall AVG?

Use msconfig.exe to see the list of startup program. You might see an
entry there that simply has the folder path. As such, Windows doesn't
know what to do with the startup item because it is not an executable
but instead just a path, so it opens Windows Explorer. This is the same
as if you entered the path into the taskbar's address bar or in Windows
Explorer's address bar. msconfig doesn't list all startup locations.
Also, it will only let you disable the startup item (by moving it out of
a standard startup location in the registry to a holding entry used by
msconfig and why you can later re-enable the entry which moves it back
to the standard startup location).

A better startup manager is SysInternals' AutoRuns. It will show all
startup locations, including some you probably won't understand, like
WinLogon events (startup items loaded when you log into your Windows
account), startup and shutdown scripts, and actions committed on
specified objects (i.e., opening an object also loads the startup item).
It will also remind you that Task Scheduler can be used to load startup
items when Windows loads or when you log into your Windows account.

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/avg-zen-warning/
https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b00000008pKPAAY

AVG is known for leaving behind pollution when you uninstall it. Some
components refuse to uninstall at all which requires you to manually do
the remnant registry and file cleanup. Your wife might still want AVG
anti-virus (although there are better choice and free ones) but it's
likely she installed some other AVG crap which included their Zen tool.
Since the Zen crap is an expiring trial, it probably does not completely
uninstall itself. It may not install at all and instead just disables
itself while leaving all its turds in the registry and file system. One
user noted Revo Uninstaller (the free version now supports both 32- and
64-bit Windows) will smash the remnants left by either AVG or ZEN.

[David E. Ross]

In Windows XP, the msconfig window cannot be resized. Thus, I could not
see everything I neeeded. However, it did give me a clue.

I used Regedit to search for "user\application data\AVG" and deleted
several keys that referred to AVG 2015. The problem has gone away.

Thanks.

[VanguardLH]

So presumably your wife installed AVG anti-virus and then decided to
uninstall it but remnants got left behind. Did you, as mentioned in one
of the forum threads, try using Revo Uninstaller to make sure other
remnants got removed that you did not look for?

[David E. Ross]

No. I do the maintenance on my wife's PC. I had the last version of
AVG Free 2015 on it. I set it to disable automatic software updates,
accepting only automatic updates of virus definitions. That is also how
I had configured AVG Free 2015 on my own PC.

I tried AVG Free 2016 when it first became available. Then I discovered
that there was NO user option to disable automatic software updates. I
do not allow any other software to update automatically because I want
to control when and whether to update. (Note that my own PC still uses
Windows 7, not Windows 10.) Thus, I removed AVG Free 2016 and
re-installed AVG Free 2015 from my archive of installers. I always try
new versions of software before inflicting them on my wife, so she did
not get AVG Free 2016 at that time.

Towards the end of 2016, AVG managed to push AVG Free 2016 onto both my
PC and my wife's PC, overriding the setting that disabled software
updates. I removed it and re-installed AVG Free 2015, but AVG Free 2016
was again -- almost immediately -- pushed and installed on both PCs.
The problem was that AVG's installer for AVG Free 2016 failed to remove
all traces of AVG Free 2015.

Thus, the problem was caused by AVG's actions and nothing that I (or my
wife) did.

[VanguardLH]

The other crap that AVG pushes is their Zen product: a single UI to
access each of their security wares along with managing their protection
across multiple devices. I remember reading an article that said you
have to obtain a special download (the full installer) that has only AVG
anti-virus and either it does not bundle in Zen or you get an
install-time option to omit Zen. That's why I mentioned Revo
Uninstaller since others found Zen could not be uninstalled, only
eradicated. Since those users did not intimately know the registry,
they didn't know what to look for or check of dependencies. It can take
some work to track down all the registry remnants and even then know
which you can delete and which you should not even if they look to be
for the product you are eradicating.

https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=Activate-AVG-Zen-Protection-Performance-or-Ultimate

AVG was shoving a trial version of Zen in with their online web
installer. You had to go find the offline installer to opt out of Zen.

I doubt what you found in the registry was all of the remnant entries.
You would have to uninstall all AVG products, try using AVG's cleanup
tool (http://www.avg.com/us-en/utilities), maybe use Revo Uninstaller to
give you a head start, and then hunt through the registry and file
system to see if all remnants got nuked.