AVG Free is an antiviral software that can help you to protect your computer against viruses. It includes the following components: Resident Shield, Personal Email Scanner, virus scanner, Update Manager, and some more.

After succesful installation AVG Free starts First Run Wizard that is dedicated to set the program and all its components up for effective work. Using the Wizard, you are offered to perform AVG Free update, to create Rescue Disk, to scan your computer for viruses and to register AVG Free. Any step may be skipped by clicking Next button in the corresponding window:

Updates of both internal virus databases and program files are provided. There are options to update from either a hard disk or Internet. Updating from a hard disk is very convenient when you want to update AVG Free on several computers (in this case you don't have to download many times the same files) or when there is no internet connection on your computer (then you may download files to a computer with internet connection, and then copy them to your PC). When Update from Internet option is selected, additional window appears, where available updates and their sizes are displayed. You may decide which updates to download, or postpone update for some time.

The Recsue Disk, that is being created in the following step, contains all the files necessary to run the AVG SOS application if your computer's system areas become infected. In case of infection the Rescue Disk will be used to restore the affected areas and remove some viruses from your computer.

In the the next step of the wizard you may set up the E-Mail Scanner. Then, in the last step, you are offered to run the virus scaner to check your entire system for viruses. The process of scanning is displayed in a separate window. AVG Free scanns not only files on hard disks, but also system registry, partition table (MBR) and boot sectors. At the bottom of the window the numbers of scanned and infected objects are displayed. There are also buttons to pause or stop the process. Unfortunately, no information about the percentage of the scanned objects and estimated time till the end of the scanning is provided.

AVG Free scaner have not found any viruses on my PC, and it is not a surprise for me, because beside AVG Free I have another non-free reliable antiviral software installed on my PC, and I tried AVG Free just out of interest, to see what this free software is able to do.

This first scanning was performed as the last step of the First Run wizard, but you can run it amy time from the Test Center Window:

From this window you can do the following: run the virus scaner (of the entire PC or selected areas), check for updates, open Help, set up Scheduler, run Virus Vault (virus quarantine, safe storage for infected files), creat the Rescue Disk, view test results and switch to a Control Center window of AVG Free:

In the Control Center all the available in AVG Free components are displayed: AVG Resident Shield, E-mail Scanner, Internal Virus Database, Scheduler (schedule for scanning computer and for updating), Shell Extensions (displayes item «Scan with AVG Free» in Windows Explorer context menu), Update Manager, Virus Vault. As it can be seen, AVG Free includes all the necessary means to protect a computer against viruses, with all these components may be run or set up from one window.

Concluding, AVG Free is a full antiviral software with all the necessary tools to keep your computer from being infected by viruses, with implemented means for updating the program making AVG Free quite effective. Of course, free version does not have some minor advantages of non-free Professional version, such as Context Sensitive Help and technical support. Moreover, AVG Free is allowed for personal home use only. But anyway it is a real antiviral software that may protect your PC against many viruses.

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