AAVM subsytem detected and RPC error - - could this be caused by RealTek?

From time to time, the Avast services have not started.
I tried repair, uninstall, reinstall, downgrade, etc.
Nothing seemed to matter - maybe once every 3 reboots, the avast services would not start properly. Manually restarting the service would work for that session.

While I was tracking down another problem, I disabled many startup options. Then I noticed Avast was starting up properly - every single time.

When I enabled the startup for Soundman.exe - Realtek AC97 driver / sound effects manager, the problems with avast came back.

Could Soundman be causing a problem? Is there a way to alter the order a service loads?

Dig

I doubt that it is soundman.exe that is causing this as the windows start-up is somewhat erratic in the order things start. avast will be trying to start as quickly as possible to provide protection as early as possible, so it may be that it is starting before a service it requires is running.

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

You could delay the loading of avast! services after other system services, see Program Settings, Troubleshooting section.

Along the way, I am sure I had more than one version of Avast 4. To remove it, I would grab the latest
aswclear.exe

I will try delaying when it loads under the program settings.

Dig

It isn’t the different versions of avast that is the concern, only if you had a different AV to avast previously installed.

Oh, I see.

Yes, at one time I had Kaspersky installed.

Dig

See: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12079.15
KAV removal tool: http://www.ice-kav.com/utilities.php
http://www.ice-kav.com/downloads/util/KAV_Registry_Clean.zip