Avast acting strangely during the time of update

Before going to bed last night I allowed my Avast to upgrade itself into version 12.2.2276. However, I thought to simply turn my computer off for the night so the upgrade would finish when I started up computer again in the morning. However, when I did, Avast seemingly hadn’t upgraded. Also, for some reason the program seemed to start a computer startup scan all by itself (as in, a scan progression window suddenly appeared in down right corner), which I stopped.

Avast still showed a notification of computer needing a restart for Avast to upgrade, so I clicked restart option in program’s home window. Restart went normally untill the desktop started to load, and it went much slower than normal (after upgrading my system to Windows 10 that is), with desctop and toolbar icons loading and programs starting slowly. Avast notification icon wasn’t animated so I figured Avast was starting slowly too. I tried to click it open, but it took some time, and suddenly notification icon came with red cross telling my computer was unprotected. And seemingly my Avast had changed itself into english version (I use finnish version as default). I tried to click the option of turning Avast real-time protection on, and the program freezed for couple of minutes until seemingly running normally again. I had to change the language and turn notification icon animation option back on. When I checked task manager after the incident, it showed bunch of conhost.exe processes running (my PC usually has 2 running by default), but they went away soon after.

Everything seems to work normally now, but I’m not quite sure what would make Avast update cause stuff like this. Could this be considered some kind of hiccup in the update itself?

Try this (in Windows 10).

Right click on the Windows icon in bottom left.

Select “Programs and Features”.

Right-click on Avast and select Change.

You’ll see a menu where you can choose to Repair Avast.

This seems to be essential after upgrading to Windows 10, or at least to the Anniversary Update.

For me, the Anniversary Update over-wrote all the privacy settings in Windows 10. I don’t know whether this is by design or whether Avast corrupted that part of the upgrade.

Avast was reporting to me that the Windows Update file was not signed, and had no record of a good reputation.

The repair installation seems to have cleared that.

Thanks for the tip Navvy, I’ll see if this issue recurs.

I got Anniversary update later this week and only noticed Avast having new program version yesterday (it doesn’t always notify me about it for some reason), and Aniiversary update didn’t seem to do anything to my settings.

That depends on your own settings within Avast:

http://screencast-o-matic.com/screenshots/u/Lh/1471121159299-22835.png

If that is checked, then new files or unknown files or unsigned files will be flagged.