Hi,
I am trying to install the free antivirus 2014 version on a Windows 8 64 OS and I get the following message:
“The installer is unable to initialize early avast! self defense with error 0x00000005! Aborting!”.
Can you please help with that?
Thanks
Same here.
I just uninstalled avira to to install avast.
Who knows…
Had been trying for the whole morning.
Sounds like avast is reacting to previous antivirus installs.
Try running the removal tool/s appropriate for your previous installs http://www.avast.com/en-gb/faq.php?article=AVKB11
I am getting the same error with a brand new Asus touch laptop with 64 bit windows 8 
Any ideas ?
Have you correctly and completely uninstalled the antivirus program that shipped with the laptop?
Hi I know this question was posted ages ago but has anyone found out the solution to this error? I also have found this problem on a brand new touch screen asus computer.
Is there any other antivirus software I’m able to down load instead of avast?
Do you have Malwarebytes installed ?
I’m pretty clueless sorry - where do I check whether I have malwarebytes installed?
If you had it I would assume that you know 
What antivirus came installed with the computer ? As that will need to be removed first
It came with McAfee. I uninstalled it before I tried to install avast! I have installed avast! on 2 other computers that my family own and it had no problem at all. One is also a Windows 8 touch model laptop (Toshiba) so I don’t think the problem lies there. I see a previous post on this thread also incurred problems on an Asus touch screen notebook. Could the problem rise from hardware?
Could be I would need to locate the post and see if the problem is similar
I have the same problem.
Since the last avast update, windows 7 doesn’t recognize my scanner (it works if I plug it on my other computer). I am not sure avast! was the cause of the problem but i tried to uninstall avast! (with avastclear.exe) and install it again. Then : “The installer is unable to initialize early avast! self defense with error 0x00000005! Aborting!”.
Then I tried to clean the registry with Ccleaner (which did find some issues related to avast) before reinstalling but it didn’t solve the problem.
I just purchased my 3rd Asus product - a new 550 Notebook. I’m shelling out for avast as I have seriously appreciated the no-nonsense protection for years for free.
I too received the error message upon install. My Notebook came preinstalled with a 30 day McAfee. Here’s how I solved it.
You need to go into the install/uninstall menu and actually UNINSTALL McAfee. I did this after I disabled as much as I could in McAfee but you should be able to do it regardless.
THEN you can run the install .exe file you downloaded and proceed.
I hope that helps others who are running up against an install error.
Had same problem today on a Windows 8 machine… McAfee had been uninstalled, so I ran their uninstall tool as well, and ran the Norton uninstall/cleanup tool just in case there might have been some remnants of that from long ago. No luck. Finally I installed and ran Malwarebytes free version via full scan, and after removing various PUPs (no virus files detected) and reboot, Avast installer ran perfectly! Hope this helps someone with similar problems…