Avast doesn't update VPS definitions automatically.

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

So, I have had a problem with Avast’s automatic update feature for a few days now. I have my settings set to automatically update and streaming updates is on. I have Avast set so it checks for an update every 2 hours but I haven’t seen any activity on my computer that Avast has even tried to update itself in days now. Instup.exe always runs on a startup of Windows but after that, it never seems to run.

Today I actually checked around the time the next check for an update was supposed to run (by timing two hours and returning to my logs) and I saw no instup.exe activity whatsoever. It’s also nothing to do with the fact that VPS updates aren’t regular. A couple of days ago, I kept checking manually for updates and it kept saying it was up-to-date, even though the site showed 2 definitions had come out since then a day later.

I’ve been monitoring it for a few days now and Avast just hasn’t tried to update itself. There’s been no activity and I dunno what’s wrong. It’s been fine until now, flawless infact. :confused:

PS: I forgot to mention, streaming updates are coming through just fine. I’ve received 200 or so in the past 24 hours, I’ve not really had any issue with the automatic update feature before. :frowning: I just wish I knew what was up. Also, I CAN actually manually update. I don’t get any errors or anything… it just updates like it normally would… I’m just used to the program updating by itself quite frequently and I’ve never really had any issues with the instup.exe process ever really. I’ve had issues with streaming and manually updating before but usually never automatic.

Anyone knows what could be causing this issue? I barely ever touch the settings etc of my program or anything, I just always leave it to run., I live in the UK so I doubt it’s a server problem or anything like that. I have had days where the program hasn’t updated for a few days or so due to none being released but this is different, there have been many released in the past few days and… nothing. It hasn’t even tried to update. I can tell because of the fact that has been a fair few backlogs of streaming folders and no actual update to the def folder.

2

The VPS updates essentially carry all of the previous streaming updates so you are still well covered in that regard.

You don’t say what the VPS version is in your Update display (or about avast) when it is reporting it is up to date and what date it is ?

You could try an avast Repair.

3

Well my VPS is up-to-date now as I manually updated it earlier… but still… this automatic update feature usually works just fine. Not sure what’s happened to it… and it still SHOULD work… as it’s an integral part of the program. I swear that it worked just fine a few days ago… and my settings are as I said they were. Automatic updates are on, streaming is on. I set it to check for updates every 120 minutes but it seems the part of the program that automatically checks isn’t working anymore or something? Cause the actual part of the program that searches and installs updates (instup.exe) is actually working, installing updates when manually doing it and not failing.

Wish I knew what was going on lol, it’s never done this before. Is there anything else I can check in like the ini’s or something that I can check to see if there may be something wrong elsewhere?

4

Personally I don’t give this area much thought since A) the streaming updates are coming in and B) if they get a little out of date then you should also get a notification popup from avast about that.

5

So, update:

I actually completely uninstalled avast and installed the newest version (10.3.2225) as I had version 2218 installed before and it didn’t help… Infact it made my system very unstable. But calmed down after a complete clean install later but the automatic updates STILL DO NOT WORK.

I’ve been researching by checking multiple different folders and stuff and I have a question for any avast techy here. Are the servers used by the manual update process and the automatic update process the same or different?

Because I checked the logs in Program Data/AVAST Software/Persistent Data/Avast/Logs/Update (2 different pads open to compare each type) and the server names for both are different. When I attempt to do a manual install and check the log afterwards it has a different server name than when I wait for activity from instup to happen from the automated service (which actually does happen) but it appears that when the automatic update happens, it ends with:

END: Avast installer/updater, return code 0 (0x00000000) [The operation completed successfully.]

When I read the log on a manual install log I get this at the end of the log:

END: Avast installer/updater, return code 40965 (0x0000A005) [No update available]

Also… the server names for both are different, as I previously mentioned: Here are the names for both.

Manual:

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download n7270985 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://n7270985.iavs9x.u.avast.com/iavs9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM’.

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download b3701573 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://b3701573.iavs9x.u.avast.com/iavs9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM’.

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download l0901386 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://l0901386.ivps9x.u.avast.com/ivps9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_VPS’.

Automatic:

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download f9673982 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://f9673982.iavs9x.u.avast.com/iavs9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM’.

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download g4070624 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://g4070624.iavs9x.u.avast.com/iavs9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM’.

ChooseServer: selected server ‘Download h9806250 AVAST9 Server’ with current url ‘http://h9806250.ivps9x.u.avast.com/ivps9x’ of type ‘URL_TYPE_DOWNLOAD_VPS’.

Is this normal? Would just like to know.

Last thing I wanna mention that is very strange… is that since fresh installing to the latest version of Avast! Antivirus… the instup.exe process seems to run before I can even login to windows, hanging pretty much any other process until it finishes. I find this odd as in previous versions that came before the process always ran after all of Avast’s processes (shields etc) had loaded. Is this normal behaviour too?

Some feedback would be appreciated. :smiley:

6

The VPS update check does happen pretty soon after boot, I think it is about 30 seconds.

An old work around to delay that check may still work with this version.
In avast5/6/7/8/9 (possibly 10) - You need to edit (using notepad) avast5.ini the [InetWD] section of the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Avast Software\Avast\avast5.ini (XP file location). Location for Vista, win7, or later C:\ProgramData\Avast Software\Avast\avast5.ini.

  • Broadband connections, add this line:
    AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=180 and
    AssumeAlwaysConnected=1 if not present (or edit AssumeAlwaysConnected=0 to AssumeAlwaysConnected=1)
[InetWD] AssumeAlwaysConnected=1 AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=180

The figure is seconds and the above equates to three minutes, you could try that and adjust upwards if required, 240, 300, etc.

When complete save the changes, avast’s self-defence module will ask for confirmation, etc. answer Yes.

7

The thing is, on version 2215-18 it always started like 15-20 seconds after login to windows. But it’s pretty much instant now (before I can even enter my password etc on the login screen, it’s happening.) I can tell because of the memory being used by avast by the time I get into my resource monitor to check activity.

I don’t really wanna delay it by THAT much, but still… I haven’t seen a single successful auto-update yet. In terms of actually seeing the program update itself and seeing it happen on a memory monitor program. It just doesn’t happen, it’s as if the autoupdate attempts to work but it cannot for some reason. Hence why in my last post it says “END: Avast installer/updater, return code 0 (0x00000000)”… because something went wrong? There should be some sort of return code to validate that it’s up-to-date?

Also, I checked my Avast5.ini and it had none of those entries you mentioned. Not even a mention of the broadband connections thing, no sign of it whatsoever. But VPSUpdate is set to Auto in there so it SHOULD be working but its not.

8

Support: Submitting a support file using the Avast Support Tool https://www.avast.com/en-eu/faq.php?article=AVKB33#artTitle

avast support https://support.avast.com

9

According to the program, I have no issues. :confused:

What should I do now? Cause this doesn’t make any sense. I did a clean install of a completely new version of the program, so if this were truly a problem with the program itself, a clean install would erase all files/registry entries etc so the problem wouldn’t be there any more. Yet it still persists. :confused:

And yeah, I did do a “clean” clean, install, using the uninstall tool on safe mode and then installing the new one.

10

As I said this worked on previous versions, I wasn’t sure it would work with the latest version.

I have checked my avast5.ini file and it is no longer in mine either, because there are a lot of new elements included and some that have changed name. However, in that location I also have avast5.ini.tmp, so it looks like my old copy has been superseded leaving behind the .tmp file.

I’m just wondering if adding the complete section contained in the quote below might work, as we have seen this before when an old element/hack is no longer included, it has still worked.

[InetWD] AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=600 AssumeAlwaysConnected=1 UpdatePeriod=120 UseRAS=0

I will give it a shot in my avast5.ini and see if A) it can be saved (yes it did) B) it doesn’t cause anything untoward or C) if it is recognised and still works. But I will have to reboot later to test it.

EDIT: Update
Well it didn’t break anything and I have the task manager open as soon as I could, I had set the delay for 600 and I sat watching the task manager and didn’t see instup.exe even after the 10 minutes. I could have missed it if there wasn’t an update available, it wouldn’t have been displayed for long.

I should have made the delay much shorter as I couldn’t resist opening other programs and checking some text files in notepad relating to this.

11

Yeah I noticed in the actual UI itself in the program that many options in regards to the update section have been removed completely such as the “Show notification box when update occurs” and that entry you mentioned in the ini. There was a box in the previous versions of Avast… think it was “Permanently connected to the internet or something” and I always had that ticked, but it’s no longer there either.

I’m just kinda worried about this, I’ve always wanted Avast! to update itself so that I don’t have to (I know I’m lazy) and it’s never had any problems in doing so, even since v6. This is the first ever time I’ve had an issue with it and it just happened randomly one day with version .2218 (which I had installed for around 6 months with 0 issues.) and the problem appears to be still persisting in this version too so I guess it’s not a problem with the core program. Must be something to do with Windows or something. :frowning:

Does anyone here know anything about the logs though? In terms of the updating and such, I never got a definitive answer on whether the parts of my automatic update log were normal or not. I do see activity around the 2 hour mark in my resource monitor (instup.exe in processes and such) and it goes away fairly quickly but I’ve also seen this in my previous version of the program too but it didn’t update automatically for 3-4 days, even though many definitions had been released in previous days.

12

Just updated (EDIT) my last post as you were posting yours.

Default settings generally won’t appear in the avast5.ini, so there might be things you won’t see any reference to.

Don’t forget that you also have the streaming updates and for the most part, the content of the VPS updates will be the streaming updates released since the previous VPS update.

13

Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t see your edited post until later. And yeah, I know that some things aren’t located in the ini… but it seems you can’t even edit that setting on the UI either now so I dunno if it’s set like that by default or not. As I said though… it was doing this “no update” thing even before I updated to this new UI (In .2215-18 those settings were still there) so something happened somewhere.

And yeah, I know the streams are basically just the same thing, but for some odd reason… I just feel generally insecure knowing that I don’t have the up-to-date VPS’s installing automatically either… it’s just some OCD thing I have lol.

14

Update: Avast! actually just updated by itself! Finally. Not sure what happened but I saw it update itself for once. Gonna monitor it for a bit and see if it’s a permenant thing.

Thanks for all the suggestions and such all.

15

You’re welcome.