After all my pain: updating Avast 7 over Avast 6, having to use aswclear, then after more travail, finally getting Avast 7 to work, I thought everything was cool. Nope. This afternoon, I locked totally. No application would run. After much more tooth gnashing and pain, I figured I’d try to use aswclear again and see whether I could use any other app without Avast on the machine. Understand, I hadn’t used Avast, I was just guessing.
So, I booted into safe mode - and was glad to be able to do that - and ran aswclear. Joy! It worked.
Then I booted back to regular Windows 7. Everything is back to normal. All clear; working fine.
If it’s any help, I’m running a Micro Express machine with a quadcore Intel i7 clocked at 3.4 GHz, 16 GB of main memory, 600 GB WD 10,000 rpm hard disk, and MS Win 7 X64.
I’m going to run without Avast for awhile. Let me know when it’s safe, again.
There is a tool for managing these situations forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=94514
Sorry to hear about your sad experiences. Come back if you need further help.
bob3160, I’m running Microsoft Security Essentials, SUPERAntiSpyware, and Malwarebytes.
Now that Avast is gone, the only thing I’ve found that doesn’t work is Windows Defender. Trying to start it elicits Error Code: 0x80070424. As far as I can see, Windows Defender is gone completely. It certainly looks like Avast 7 caused some bad stuff on my machine.
Both Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes say the machine is clean. I also ran aswMBR which said that I have a suspect file called MpNWMon.sys. I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t have Avast on this machine at all so running a fix for it is pointless.