Today Avast UI asked me to reboot in order to apply an update. After rebooting it no longer worked.
I already tried rebooting and repairing multiple times. I also uninstalled Comodo Firewall to rule out a conflict.
On startup the Avast tray icon appears normally, but left or right click doesn’t do anything. After a while an Avast shortcut appears on the desktop and the tray icon becomes “crossed”. The tooltip says “you are unprotected”. Clicking to “update engine and virus definitions” returns “error 0x80046402”. The Avast UI window says “Loading… This shouldn’t take long”. Windows Defender auto activated itself and does not mention anything about Avast being enabled.
According to C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\report\FileSystemShield.txt the shields are not running.
I noticed various dumps in C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\log.
The Avast services appear to be running, but “aswbIDSAgent” does not.
There are many errors in C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\log\Amsi.log, like the following:
Avast fixed itself a few hours later, so it is now working properly.
However, each time Avast asks me to reboot I have to manually delete C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\setup\Reboot.txt because it is not deleted automatically after rebooting. I had this happen multiple times already and I’m not sure what’s causing it. If I do not delete the file then Avast keeps trying to complete update / setup after each reboot.
Like in January, i had to uninstall Avast and install it anew.
Honestly, i used Avast Free for many many Years, and i never got such problems until January. I hope this recent problem will not become a persistent one, it would become troublesome.