Version 8.0 Is NOT compatible with SpywareBlaster or Spybot 'immunize' features. The AVG people are well aware of this and sent this e-mail to a user in response to problems encountered, suggesting the following actions..

Dear Sir/Madam,

According to your e-mail, we would like to inform you with that, the situation, which you have described is most probably really caused by using SpywareBlaster security application on your computer, which contains "immunize" feature. This feature is causing that, it will overwrite mentioned ActiveX registry entries by it's own values to avoid some spyware to overwrite these registry keys by malicious
values.

However, because the SpywareBlaster is overwriting the same registry values as malware, it is very hard to recognize, which values are overwritten by SpywareBlaster and which by real malware, therefore these registry entries are detected as infected. Generally (not even by our company), the use of more than one security system under the same operating system is NOT recommended because of possible conflict in their main parts, usually in the resident scanning system, etc. It could, unfortunately, cause unexpected failures to your system.

The situation, which you have described is caused by incompatibility between AVG and SpywareBlaster security application on your computer and we would like to recommend you to uninstall SpywareBlaster and all the other security applications from your computer (if you are using any) to avoid possible conflict situations between AVG and the other software.

We would like to inform you with that, if you will use AVG Anti-Virus network edition 8.0 on your computers and if it will be fully updated, then your computer will be protected against all of the latest viruses, spyware, Trojan horses and the other malware.

For more information about the situation, which you have described, we would like to recommend you to visit our FAQ on the following web page: http://www.avg.com/ww.faq.num-1198#faq_1198

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding, it is appreciated. Answers to the most common questions can be found here as well:
http://www.avg.com/faq/

Best regards,
David Streichl
AVG Technical Support

In fairness to AVG, I believe that SpywareBlaster and Spybot 'suggest' that other spyware detection programs can be responsible for problems when run alongside the competition. Certainly, this is the case when running more that one anti-virus solution.

The problem facing each and every computer user is simple enough. Who or what can be trusted to give 'full' protection against every exploit, past, present and future? We have all gotten so used to having to run multiple spyware solutions, and having to decide to scrap all but one is a difficult decision.

For me, the worst aspect is that AVG is slowly mutating from a small, nifty anti-virus solution into an invasive gargantuan a la Norton and McAfee.