all icons in start menu & explorer gone after running a scan

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

each & every time I scan even a single file with the 4.8 free edition, ALL icons in the start menu and in explorer vanish

I tried tweakui to rebuild icons, but that only made the desktop icons vanish too

I tried to use task manager to do ‘end task’ on explorer, but that did nothing to restore the icons

I called the friend that has been using this for over a year, and she said “this is normal, you must restart after every time you use avast”

somehow, this doesn’t seem right - it would appear that somewhere during the scan, avast grabs the GDI memory for working space or something, thereby deleting all icons that have been loaded

it seems that tweakui only calls the GDI for a fresh copy of the icons to rebuild the graphic page rather than hunting down each icon, and I don’t know any way to reload them without a reboot

is there a work-around for this?

avast 4.8 on winME

EDIT: I notice that the icons don’t disappear until the program is closed - as long as the scan panel is open, all explorer & start menu icons are OK, click ‘exit’ and they are all gone

2

It’s Windows ME?
Sorry, but I can’t help… ancient, medieval OS. :o

3

Hi Crassius

You may not have enough memory to run v4.8. Minimum would be 256mb.
The precise behavior I cannot explain. But Windows 98SE and ME run avast 4 just fine.

4

happens on 98SE & two winME machines - 500meg or more on all of them with over 300meg free

EDIT: I’m not expecting a fix on s/w that has moved to a newer version, just hoping for a work-around or tip on quick way to restore icons

5

Hi,

I may have a workaround, if you can minimise Avast to the Task Bar without losing your icons; try using the freeware “Task Killer” whilst it is still on the Task Bar.

My regards
W98SE user

6

no joy there, but at least it was something I hadn’t tried yet

7

Hi again,

Sorry about ME, but you might try it with W98SE as it worked for me.

8

okay crassius, plenty of ram.

perhaps like zyndstoff says, these outdated technologies, 98SE and ME…

I used to run avast 4 on WinME no problem at all before I switched all computers to XP
but like 98SE is a complete waste of time in 2010 - I think time to move forward

9

got XP on the niece’s machine - not worth the effort it takes to keep it running - maybe next year I’ll drag them into some kind of *nix

I recall several years ago that mozilla had a similar prob that turned out to only happen with a few brands of vid card - after a long time, their only solution was to open their own local server and stuff vid pointers into that, bypassing the GDI

I haven’t the tools or energy these days to trap the call, but I’ll check here often & post if I find a way out

10

yes certainly could be video card issue, sorry I could not be of more help

  • you could try another card as they relatively cheap

I did use both 98SE and ME for years with no major problems

  • I don’t how I would fare with them now though - they are become less and less supported

I find XP effortless