Avast 5 Free install crashes on Unicode Windows profile path

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi, I’m Joren. I use Windows Vista with a profile named all in Unicode (non-Latin characters, Japanese to be specific). I was trying to install Avast 5 (free) to upgrade from 4.8 (which installed with no problems whatsoever). I downloaded the 5 setup file, ran it, and got the following mysterious error:

An error 0 (00000000) has occured. Last performed operation was: spawning.

I thought, hey, it must be corrupted, so I downloaded it again. No dice. Tried with a different browser even. No dice. Then I had an idea… I wonder if it’s trying to extract files to the %TEMP% directory and tripping over my Unicode %USERNAME%?

So, I switched to a profile without Unicode characters, installed it, and it works fine! I guess you must not have very many international users? :slight_smile:

My theory is that the setup file is unable to handle a temporary files directory that is in Unicode. If this is correct, this will affect any and all users with a Unicode profile name, who will be unable to install/upgrade to Avast 5, so I thought I should let you know about it since I didn’t find any other reports in the forum’s search engine. Thanks!

– Joren

2

Interesting… do you happen to have short filename generation disabled?
(i.e. if you start regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem, what is the value of NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation ?)

Also, could you please post the name of the profile you use originally? (or if you don’t want to post it here, please upload it in a Unicode text file to ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming … might be better anyway, as I’m not sure if the forum software wouldn’t destroy the text).
Thanks!

3

Sorry to take so long to see your reply! My profile name is just my name in katakana. ジョーレン コームズ (note that the space character is a Unicode character too), so the profile path would be C:\Users\ジョーレン コームズ.

The value of the registry key is 0. Thank you,

– Joren