So, you remember that love-hate relationship I had with AVG? It’s now officially a hate-hate relationship.

I hadn’t used iTunes yet today when I decided now was the time to rock out as I made the last push of work for the night (yes, these are my friggin hours). Of course, here comes the AVG Resident Shield alert about a Trojan Horse called Small.BOG that seemed to have infested all sorts of DLLs in the iTunes and iPod directories on my machine.

FFS. Of course, I freak out (I don’t normally get infections…I wear a condom when I’m out on the Web) and shut everything down, allow AVG to remove the infected files and start to download a new iTunes installer to see if that’ll fix things. Then, given my history with AVG, I decide to hunt around on the Web.

There it was…AVG fucked something else up. This time it was virus update that flagged iTunes localization DLLs as a trojan. And I wasn’t the only one who’d run into this problem (which seemed to coincide with a release that was pushed out today). Duncan Reilly at The Inquisitr got it right. AVG FAIL.

If you already “healed” it…

Your iTunes install is a bit fubar now. To fix it, just download the latest iTunes installer if you haven’t already and just run it. You’ll be prompted to Repair the installation. Make it happen but don’t run iTunes it yet. If you get any more notices from AVG, ignore them. Follow the next step below.

If you are staring in fear at that alert dialog…

Close it. And open AVG’s interface. Click on Update Now. You’ll notice your last update prior to doing that was likely today (July 24). You’ll also notice and get prompted about a new update to the virus definitions. Accept it and make it happen. Presto chango, you’ve survived another of AVG’s stumbles.

If you added the iTunes/iPod to the AVG exceptions list…

If you’re one of those people that took other people’s advice to add the iTunes and iPod folders to the exceptions list, take this moment now to REMOVE those exceptions. When I first saw those posts out there, I read it like this “Hi, I’m someone trying to perpetuate this Trojan. Please do this to help me.”

Thanks to relatively quick thinking on AVG’s part, we’re back to normal without those exceptions.

You’ve gotta laugh at the situation. AVG has this golden opportunity to take business from Symantec and McAfee by offering a David to the Goliaths in the business. Instead, they fuck up left and right showing off just how unprofessional they can be. They have a smaller and faster (though, that’s relative since I’m noticing AVG slowing stuff down with that resident shield…the same one that wasted my time above) AV app that covers the gamut. Oh well…I guess we have to live on with the fact that no one can write a solid AV app that’ll just do its job quietly in the background and make our lives easier. Maybe Google will finally go there…

out

UPDATE:  Seems Mac users were affected too. There are also instructions on how to simply restore any iTunes files that were locked in the “vault”.

I’d been wondering why the fuck Outlook was running after I closed it. I mean, I’m supposed to be the master of this bitchy machine (hint of an upcoming rant: hey, Microsoft, when I’m working on one App, don’t you fucking switch to another one just because it’s launching…it’s rude and actually is a security hazard).

Anyhow, I figured out who the guilty party was…no surprise here: Apple — the shimmering titanium messiah of the dreary tech age. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. Everything reeks cult: meglomaniacal but charismatic leader, millions of enslaved masses brainwashed into thinking said meglomanic is the savior, pagan priests at temples spreading the word while supressing dissidents, and when you look behind the curtain, you see the great portrayal but mediocre execution of “the word” (their products).

Read the rant and feel free to run and hide…because Apple isn’t going anywhere anytime soon…