Updating AVG Antivirus produced the error message: “A .bin file is missing”. Now it seems that my computer is not protected. How can I fix this problem so that AVG updates correctly? The computer is running Windows XP.

First, you should ensure that you are running the latest version of AVG Antivirus on your computer. At the time of writing the latest version of AVG is 8.5 and available for download from free.grisoft.com. If you are running a previous version of AVG I would suggest that you uninstall that version from your computer and then download and install the newest version available from their website. Once this has been installed try updating AVG to see whether the problem continues. I have read reports that this problem occurred in previous versions of AVG and also occasionally due to the AVG update servers being down. Hopefully the combination of updating AVG to the latest version together with attempting the update at a different time should result in a successful update of AVG.

In the event that AVG will still not update correctly, the next step involves manually updating AVG. Visit free.avg.com/download-update for a listing of the latest available updates for AVG which can be manually updated and then applied to AVG. On this page click the link for the latest Windows update with the description “All necessary modules”. You will notice that the file which you download is a .BIN file, which is much like the file that is failing to automatically download and install within AVG. Download this file to a new folder on the Desktop called “AVG Updates”. Once the file has downloaded you will need to install the update in AVG. To do this, open AVG and click the “Tools” menu > “Update from directory”. Navigate to the location of the AVG update file (in your case, this would be the newly created folder “AVG Updates” on the Windows desktop) and click OK. AVG will proceed to apply the update in that directory. Now verify that the update has been accepted by AVG. Be aware, you have now set AVG to look at that local directory for new updates. As such, if you do not manually place updates in that directory then AVG may not update as it may not look over the internet for the updates. If you find this occurs, once you have successfully completed this one-off manual update, you will need to reset the update source to the internet (so that AVG automatically contacts the AVG servers to download future updates). To do this, go back into the AVG interface and the “Tools” menu then select “Update”. This should retrigger internet based updates. Be aware, you may not need to do this procedure (as AVG may have already realised that you only wanted to do that manual update as a one-off and will continue to look at the internet for future updates) but I thought it would be useful to include this procedure just in case.