AVG anti-virus messing up

[frustrated01]

I have AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 Free version and I have had it for a couple of months (It was already on the comp. when I bought it) and its been working great up until a week ago. It said it needed to be upgraded so I upgraded it and it said for the upgrades to take effect I need to restart the comp. and I signed off the net and restarted the comp. since then everytime I get on the comp it says it needs to be updated and i would try to do it and imediatly it would say it is finished comp. needs to restart to take effect. and I cannot open up my user interface. What has happend and what can i do to fix it?

[netibiza]

Be very careful, there is a virus around called AV 2009 and it emulates avg, it messed up my computer and caused to totally seize up 3 days, it also has a red shield and pretends to be something to do with windows. I was an idiot and believed it so clicked on things. Be very careful

[Gormless]

I had AVG, but after upgrading I found that the pc was virtually unusable for about 15 minutes after booting up. I got rid of it and downloaded Avast.

Any anti-virus will necessarily affect the performance of your computer, but it seemed to me that AVG took it over!