Do I really need AGV?

[dcarleton]

For the longest time I have been runing the free version of AGV on my PC. We mostly never see or hear from it. Except for...

Sometimes AGV tries to protect us from installers and excetutables related to Open Rails (or MSTS). And it's stubborn. Won't ever take our word for it that these things really are safe.

But it's been just a minor muisance, until this week. I do daily updates of the OR testing version. Starting last week, AGV won't allow new testing versions to run. And yesterday, when Trainsimulations released their generic freignt car set, AGV refused to allow it to be installed!

Now, it's obvious that other users are installing these same things without issues, so the files themselves should be trustworthy. In that case, the workaround is simple - disable AGV and run the installers or executables. Windows doesn't have any problem with these files, and it has nothing to do with 'protected folders'.

That then begs the question "Do I really need AGV?"

[TrainSimJack]

You certainly need something - though I think AVG has fallen out of favor.

[rdayt]

Bitdefender free does a swell job without all of the nanny stuff.
But, yeah, you need something.

Randy

[jdgremsjr]

As someone that deals with this question on a daily basis, all you need is Microsoft's Security Suite and the free version of Malwarebytes. Microsoft's Antivirus have improved greatly since the Windows 8.1 version, so as long as you are running Windows 10, or Windows 11 there is no need to run anything else. The newer antivirus programs slow down your machine and put so much bloatware on your computer, the cure is worse than the disease.

If you are running 8.1 or older ignore everything I just said, and continue to run AVG.