After Update: Thunderbird and Firefox unusable

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have Windows XP. Today Avast asked me to update and I updated to 2015.10.2214
After updating I cannot use my Thunderbird 31.5.0 and not even start my Firefox.
From the explanations given in this forum I don’t understand a word.
A software that wrecks your installations is not acceptable. Good by Avast. Never again.

2

No software is trouble free all the time…

Have you tried a reinstall ?.. remove with avast removal tool first https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

3

Maybe you want to try one of these …

AVG
www.techworld.com/news/security/avg-antivirus-users-in-reboot-chaos-after-bad-update-3251797/

McAfee
www.zdnet.com/article/defective-mcafee-update-causes-worldwide-meltdown-of-xp-pcs/

Bitdefender
www.pcworld.com/article/192000/article.html

Kaspersky
www.pcworld.com/article/2027173/bad-kaspersky-antivirus-update-keeps-users-from-accessing-websites.html

Panda
www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/11/panda_antivirus_update_self_pwn/

As you see, none are fault free :wink:

4

If you want help this is the place to get it, if you don’t understand, just ask - if you have come to vent - good luck in finding another AV, especially one that is committed to continue support for XP for some time yet.

5

I deinstalled AVAST now using the deinstall tool in safe mode. Thunderbird is saying “Mail server responded: encryption required”. Giving Thunderbird resp. the mail server my password does not help. I can’t even start Firefox. It says “Couldn’t find XPCom”. I was setting my system back to last week, but that didn’t help. I wouldn’t like to delete Thunderbird and then reinstall because I’m afraid I’ll lose all my E-Mails.

6

Thank you for your kind words, David. By setting my system back to 2 days ago I could repair Thunderbird now and by reinstalling Firefox it’s usable again. I’m very sorry that I cannot use Avast any more, since I liked it and it helped me a lot over the years.

7
I wouldn't like to delete Thunderbird and then reinstall because I'm afraid I'll lose all my E-Mails.
thats the beauty of webmail, whatever happens to your computer, mail are there when you log in again ;)

but you can sett up your mail client to leave mail/backup on mail server … if you have enough space

8

That’s the beauty of Webmail: 5,000 E-Mails unsorted.

9

you can sort in webmail…

i have Yahoo / Gmail / Outlook / Fastmail … and they all have sort functions you can sett up

there are also other stuff, like free online storage and auto backup of pictures form smartphones
full sync and backup of address book sync in smartphone…