I have to reboot 3 to 5 times before Avast will actually start up (the red ball with white X goes away). This has happened for the last 5 or 6 updates. There is nothing unusual on my system. Sometimes I am not even able to connect to the Internet because everything after the Avast start up just does not continue. I have to wait a long time for the Internet to start up. Does it take a long time for the new update files to get in place? Any ideas? It is very frustrating. I have consider another anti-virus program but will try to stick with Avast if this problem can be fixed quickly.
Right click on the avast! icon in the taskbar then Open avast! user interface then SETTINGS then Troubleshooting then select Load avast! services only after loading other system services
Turn on the Background Intelligent Transfer Service and set it to Automatic, that is what did it for me on XP Pro SP3.
It seems if you tweak XP services Avast is relying on them to know if it itself is running.
Also in Avast in Settings/StatusBar, unselect things for it to monitor that you haven’t got running like auto updates if you’re not using them, and the notification will go away.
Still having a problem with Avast not starting up after an update. I tried “Troubleshooting then select Load avast! services only after loading other system services” and that has not helped.
I know it is not SB because SB is always on. If SB was the problem, Avast would never start up. But it has after 2 to 5 reboots.
A strange thing did happen in the previous update. It started up right away. Go figure. And in the update yesterday it started up after one reboot. The reboot was required because Avast 6 was installed.
It seems to be coming up now right away. My guess is that it takes a long time for Avast to completely install itself. I do not know what else it could be.
Go to Control Panel than Add/Remove Programs, and than click on Avast like you are going to remove it. You will get a Repair option under like three options. Click that. Follow the prompts after that. You may need to reboot.
The other thing that I was thinking of is, when you said, SB, I assume you mean Spybot Search and Destroy. Do have the Tea Timer installed for Spybot S & D? A long time ago, I heard that this can conflict with Avast.
For best results, Avast a lot of times does not like other always running shields from competing programs in the background.
Try uninstalling Spybot S & D and see if that improves Avast updates. I would leave Spybot S & D uninstalled. If you want it through and choose to reinstall it, don’t include the Tea Timer utility. (This MAY require a Custom Install of SBS&D.) If you do the Typical install, UNCHECK anything associated with Tea Timer.
Than if you are still have problems, and with Tea Timer uninstalled, run the Avast Repair utility. Report back so we can see how it went.
