Avast 8 is completely bugged out for me

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

So, after upgrading avast to the 8 version it stopped working and is completely broken.

In the main UI it says “Unsecured. The avast! antivirus is off” and when i click either start or resolve all, the window stops responding and I can’t close it.
At the top it says “not yet registered” even though I made a new free account. Going to Maintenance>Registration and clicking Register now give an error: “The AAVM subsystem detected a RPC error”.
None of the shields work (right-clicking on tray icon, shields control, enable all shield does nothing) and when trying to scan a blank pop-up appears.
I can’t repair/uninstall avast from control panel, I’m getting an error: “A setiface error has occurred: 2”.

I’m running:
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1.
avast free antivirus 8.0.1483. Virus definitions version and number of definition show as unknown, even though when i update it says already up to date.

Things I tried:
Searching the forums and google, none of the solutions worked for me.
Downloading avast uninstall utility and using the method: restart to safemode > run the utility > restart > install avast > restart.
Checking the services and processes list. Avast service is already running (also tried to stop - start it again) and startup type set to automatic, AvastSvc.exe and AvastUI.exe are in the processes.
Checking event log. The only error message related to avast is this: “A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the avast! Antivirus service.”
No other antiviruses are installed.

Any help resolving my issue is appreciated. I’ve attached setup.log

2

You mentioned that no other AV is running but that is sometimes not enough as low level drivers can still be active and cause issues, what other AV’s do you have installed?

3

I don’t know why the uninstall didn’t work, I don’t know what version you have (the old one doesn’t recognise avast 8) or exactly how you ran the removal process:

  • Download the latest version of avast, 8.0.1483 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn’t save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.

  • Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, aswClear.exe find it here and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for all versions).

    1. Now uninstall avast! (using add remove programs, if you can’t do that (as appears to be the case) start from the next step), reboot.- 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility, it will request it be run from safe mode (and will handle the boot into safe mode), first for 7.x if previously installed and then for 8.0, once complete reboot into normal mode.- 3. install the latest version, reboot.

As mentioned another AV installed or remnants could be an issue, as the error: “The AAVM subsystem detected a RPC error” has previously been associated with another AV installed or remnants on the system.

4

I have the free version of Malwarebytes Antimalware, which only has a scanner and no real-time protection. I’ve read that it doesn’t conflict with antiviruses and it didn’t in the past for me. I’ll try to uninstall it though.

5

Uninstalling Malwarebytes didn’t help.

I wrote the version and that I used the utility in the OP.

6

Yes you did and I also said I don’t know the ‘avast! uninstall utility’ version you used (which must include avast 8 in its uninstall routines), nor did I know exactly how you went about the uninstall routine. That is why I posted the instructions with links and order.

7

Try stopping Avast! from starting. run> msconfig > startup tab. Un-check Avast! and reboot. Then try to uninstall from windows add remove programs.

If it works you will have to do a fresh install.

8

Unchecking avast in msconfig won’t work as only avastUI.exe is listed there and that is only the tray icon and interface.

9

Then Uncheck it under services. Disable it. You may have better luck uninstalling if the service is not running.

10

I followed everything in your instructions and it didn’t help (the utility did include avast 8 in its uninstall routines). After I reinstall avast it works perfectly, but when I restart it stops working.

After restart the service and process is checked back automatically.

11

Without first turning off avasts self protection you wont be able to stop it from services, this isn’t the problem as the OP is able to uninstall it with the removal tool in safemode where the avast services are not running anyway.

12

Please excuse this stab-in-the-dark from this newbie, but since your problem seems to have similar symptoms to mine, and my machine was also a Win7 Ultimate, you could try scanning your hard drive for bad sectors and bad file indexing before doing a clean uninstall and reinstall. (Yes, that was how I fixed my system.)

Go to your Start menu > All Programs > Accessories folder, right-click “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”. Assuming you have a standard Windows installation where everything is in your ‘C’ drive, in the Command Prompt window, type without quotes, “chkdsk c: /f”, and press Enter. If it asks to schedule the check for the next time your system starts-up, tell it Yes. (If it ever asks to unmount or dismount the volume/drive, tell it No.) Then reboot to start the scan. If you intend to install Avast in a different hard drive, might as well do a chkdsk /f on that drive as well (do it after the reboot, and change “c:” to your other drive letter). Since the “/f” tells chkdsk to fix all errors, feel free to run aswClear.exe and do a clean install of Avast8 afterwards.

BTW, I was given this version of aswClear.exe: http://files.avast.com/test5beta/aswclear.exe. I was told this does version 8.0 and earlier, and the nice thing about this aswClear is that you can run it in Windows’ normal mode, in which case it would ask if it can reboot Windows into Safe mode. Of course you should choose yes, and it will automatically run once your Windows had rebooted, and restart Windows after it is done.