I’ve been using Avast Home for about 2 years, I believe (and recommending and installing it for many people, btw), and have never had any problems with it. This past week I’ve been fighting off Istbar, which is the most virus-like adware I’ve ever seen. After discovering this malware and removing (or so I thought) it with Ad-Aware, I shut down my PC. The next time I started it up, Windows warned me that Avast was disabled. The icons showed up in the taskbar, but with the “crossed-out” symbol. Attempts to reenable protection did not work – I got an error saying something about modules not being installed (sorry, I didn’t write it down).
I then uninstalled completely and reinstalled (I went through this process normally and in safe mode, and both had the same results). The install seemed to proceed normally, but when I ran Avast it displayed the following error message:
[b]Unknown Error[/b]
Storage cannot be created for the "Splash" task.
If I remember correctly, the registration code window then appeared. I entered my code and got the following two errors:
Configuration is not loaded properly. (Error: dbsCreateObject)
Program cannot save parameters to the storage! (Error: dbsCreateObject)
After this, Avast was in the same condition as prior to uninstalling and reinstalling: disabled and unable to be reenabled!
I also used the downloadable uninstall tool to make sure Avast was completely uninstalled prior to reinstall, but that didn’t make any difference.
It may be a coincidence that Istbar showed up about the same time Avast stopped working, but I wanted to include that in case it’s related. I did finally get rid of Istbar using SpyBot.
Does anyone know what might be happening here and how I can get Avast working again? I had to install another antivirus program in the meantime, but I would much rather be using Avast.
I would recommend that you get RejZor’s avast! External Control program it has many tweaks for avast! try changing the Database storage method from ODBC to XML.
I think that HiJackThis is the best way to resolve the 1stbar issue, visit Eddy’s Website click the “HiJackThis Section” and also the “Malware removal instructions and applications” section, and follow the directions there and get back to us if you need more help…
Thanks, David. Your recommendation to change the database storage method did the trick! I’m still not sure why this happened in the first place, but at least avast! is working again. Do you think something might have gotten corrupted? Thanks again.
Happy to have helped and thank you for letting us know what resolved the problem, that helps others browsing/searching the forums for a solution to a similar problem.
During the two years that you have been using avast other things are also changing on your system, not least OS updates, additional programs added, etc. sometimes there can be issues. Many times we never find out the true cause, but often members of these forums recognise a symptom and offer a suggestion that worked for others.
THat will just make my day !! I have the exavt same problem as insomni. So I’ll try removing lstbar with spybot since already installed and proceed with hijackthis if first option is not succesful.
