AVG Free to cease support of Windows 98, ME and NT, in Aug 2008

If you operate a Windows 98, ME, or NT computer online, with AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition protection, this statement on the AVG Free Supported Platforms page will be of utmost importance to you.

"* Some older operating systems such as Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 98 will only be supported until August 2008 as a minimum."

While this policy statement does not specify an actual date in August 2008, for the end of support and the last three words are vague, the intent is quite obvious. At some date in, or shortly after August, 2008, they will probably issue a new version of AVG Free, which will not install on Windows 98, ME, or NT computers.

People with these affected operating systems may think that by simply not upgrading, they will be able to continue to use the existing version. It is true that their version of AVG will still function, but when Grisoft stops releasing automatic updates for the previous versions, these folks are going to be unprotected against new and altered threats. In today's world that is tantamount to no protection at all.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is currently updated automatically, once a day, but users are free to check for updates manually, as often as they wish. Thoise who do will usually find that definition files are updated several times every day. I have even created a means of checking automatically, every hour, on the hour, using Windows Task Scheduler. The details for the current version are shown below. Note, that you should check the path and destination directory names for your installation and alter them accordingly, before using this task.

Start in: "C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG7"
Run: "C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG7\avginet.exe" /SCHED=
Schedule Task: Daily
Start time: (when you want to start checking for updates)
Schedule Task daily: Every 1 day(s)
ADVANCED settings
Check: Repeat task
Every: 1 Hour(s)
Until: 24 hours
Click OK, then click Apply, then OK again, to save and exit the task scheduler.

These parameters will run the automatic online updater every hour, on the hour. If updates are not available it will appear and disappear in a second or two. If there are updates available at that time they will be downloaded automatically and installed, after which a little box will pop-up, telling you the update was successfully applied. You can click OK to dismiss this notice, or wait 30 seconds for it to go away on its own.

If you are one of those people who are in the soon to be abandoned group, of Windows 98, ME, or NT users, you may want to start searching for an alternative anti-virus product. Avast Home Edition is a free anti virus product that still supports Windows 98, although some new features will not work on that OS. Future versions will have even less functionality under Windows 98 and ME. If you are still running a Windows 98 or ME computer on the Internet, you really should think hard about updating to a newer operating system.