Hey Avastinites, long time reader, first time poster.
Fresh install of most recent Avast, installed fine and prompted me to do a restart and scan - which it went through, upon my Computer starting up I assumed Avast! was doing its thring behind the scenes and went about my business.
Decided to today to do a scan and upon running Avast, it pops up with its Memory scan window and ‘Time left on trial’ and upon completing the Test of Memory / Startup is just closes.
I have gone into the avast folder, and the only executable that runs is ashAvast.exe, and again is pops up with the memory test window, goes through the test and closes.
I have googled long and hard and have found a few other people who have asked this same question, but not received answers - hoping to clarify and god willing, fix this little problem.
Currently running Windows XP SP3, completely legit, 3 day old fresh install of Avast, and from experience I have never seen anything from the program beyond the memory/startup test window.
You say a fresh install, but is this on a system that hasn’t had another AV installed.
Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
This is what I would suggest in the way of a fresh/clean install:
Download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall. Ensure that you scroll down and select the avast direct download link for the English version and not Cnet as that is for an on-line installation (not what you want to do). - Direct download for avast Home, English version, http://files.avast.com/iavs4pro/setupeng.exe.
Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD.
Now uninstall (using add remove programs, if you can’t do that start from the next step), reboot.- 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility, reboot. If step 1 failed it may be necessary to run this from safe mode, once complete reboot into normal mode.- 3. install the latest version, reboot.
You are right, I did originally have Avira installed on this machine, which I removed with Add / Remove programs.
I followed your steps, including booting into safe mode to use the uninstall tool, and then rebooting to install from the full set up executable, rather than the cnet downloader - however problem still persists. Memory/Startup test, then it closes down.
Try this to ensure all remnants are gone - Avira AntiVir Uninstall Package & RegistryCleaner (choose appropriate version): http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html, Avira RegistryCleaner. I think it is the link to the ‘Avira AntiVir RegistryCleaner’ which is a .zip file.
Would I best to run the tool and remove all Avira keys, then try Avast again? Or uninstall avast (again) clean keys, THEN reinstall? Which would be more suitable?
I would first try to remove all the avira keys and reboot, check if avast is working first.
If so you may have saved some time and effort. If it isn’t working, try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow. Then if necessary reinstall avast.
Have followed these steps now, ended up doing a safe mode uninstall of Avast, removal of Avira keys, reinstalled Avast and came back to the same problem.
The Change/Remove button in Add/Remove, when pushed, does nothing - and again, all other executables for Avast do nothing when double clicked.
If the add remove programs Change/Remove function isn’t working then the program didn’t install correctly.
What avast processes are running in Task Manager, they begin with ash or asw, see image ?
I’m at a bit of a loss as to what might be going on in your system as this could also be an indication of of the presence of malware blocking avast.
What happens if you try to run C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashSimpl.exe directly (don’t know if you tried that one) ?
If you haven’t already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it and report the findings (it should product a log file).
MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, On-Demand only in free version http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/malwarebytes/mbam-setup.exe, right click on the link and select Save As or Save File (As depending on your browser), save it to a location where you can find it easily later. - 2. SUPERantispyware On-Demand only in free version.
Don’t worry about reported tracking cookies they are a minor issue and not one of security, allow SAS to deal with them though. - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie.
