[Tom Seeley]

Maybe the answer is here on this forum or obvious to experts, but I need to be sure so I'll ask!

I'm running AVG Free 7.5 and I'm ready to replace it with AVG Free 8.5. I know where and how to download 8.5, I think.

Should I UNinstall 7.5 first? Or will installing 8.5 with 7.5 already installed do the job?

If I should uninstall, can I do it using MS Add/Remove? Or is there a smarter way?

And finally, once I'm ready to install 8.5, should I temporarily disable other protection such as Zone Alarm, Spybot S&D, and Ad-Aware while I do that?

[Phantom010]

I would uninstall it with the AVG Remover first.

[clsxmas]

There is another resource that could be useful for an AVG 8.5 Free upgrade. Complete instructions available at http://helpmerick.com/how-to-upgrade...-video-tip.htm It worked well for me.

[DarqueMist]

The newest version of Adaware is known to conflict with AVG 8.5 so having it active during installation could cause problems

[golferbob]

i see we got a new updated avg 8.5.287 today. i had to uninstall with avg tool & install the new one.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/AVG_AntiVi...tion_d886.html

[Tom Seeley]

Well, thanks, all for the sound advice!

I did install AVG Free 8.5 as you suggested. I shut down Zone Alarm and Spybot S&D before beginning the AVG install routine. I forgot all about Ad-Aware, but I'm running an older version and it must not have caused me any trouble, because everything worked fine! The 8.5 install routine removed 7.5 the way it wanted to, and quickly reported to me that 8.5 had installed correctly. I then did its update routine and ran a routine check of the whole computer and everything worked fine.

Again, thanks.

The only two things that seemed a bit unusual were:

1. I downloaded 8.5 build 287 from one free.avg.com site, onto my desktop, and an hour later from my laptop I navigated to what I thought was the same site, but all I got there was 8.5 build 285! Both installed quite fine, but when I did the update to the laptop version it did give me the latest virus definitions but did not update me to build 287. That didn't appear to affect anything except some of the built-in scan settings weren't exactly the same between the two builds.

2. I remembered to delete all my temp files, browsing histories, cookies, etc., from the laptop but I forgot to do that before doing the first scan on the desktop. It ran for over 3 hours, before I said "fuggedaboutit" and just shut it off! Is it typical to take that long? I had over 500,000 "things" checked by the time I in effect pulled the plug! On the laptop, about half that many things took a bit over 2 hours. No problem, I guess; I'm just curious if it's working right on each machine.