Avast hangs Vista Home Premium

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I briefly scanned the forum and couldn’t find this issue anywhere. I’ve been an Avast fan for years. I have a new Dell laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium SP2. It is the 32-bit version.

Have tried loading Avast. It seems to load OK, but when I reboot and try to log in, Vista “hangs” at the welcome screen. The only thing I’m able to do is boot into safe mode, uninstall Avast, and then the PC will boot fine. I’ve tried installing and uninstalling, but can never get past the “welcome” screen whenever Avast is installed. Anyone encounter this?

2

Do you have any antivirus running alongside avast or any previous antivirus before avast?

3

How much RAM does the system have?

4

Any other security program that could interfere? Firewall?

5

The laptop has 3gb of memory. I’ve turned off Windows firewall and turned off "User Account Control. I see something called Windows defender that seems to be in the OS but haven’t figured out how to disable that yet.

6

Neither Windows firewall nor Windows Defender should play a role here. There is no problem with them.
Was there any other previous antivirus in this machine?

7

It would be best if Windows Firewall is left on unless you have a third party firewall installed. On the otherhand, Windows Defender is good one, there’s no need to disable it unless you have anything to take it’s place.

By the way, do you have any previous antivirus like Norton?

8

Someone had loaded a program called “total security”, but I had removed it. Possibly there are some elements of it that weren’t totally removed…???

9

If remnants are possible, you may try running these tools:

(1) Hijack This
HJT will generate a log, please post it here for analysis.

(2) Malwarebytes Antimalware

By the way, do you remember that last software you installed since this event happened?

10

I suggest:

  1. Clean your temporary files.
  2. Schedule a boot time scanning with avast with archive scanning turned on. If avast does not detect it, you can try DrWeb CureIT! instead.
  3. Use MBAM (or SUPERantispyware or even Spyware Terminator) to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete them.
  4. Test your machine with anti-rootkit applications. I suggest avast! antirootkit or Trend Micro RootkitBuster.
  5. Make a HijackThis log to post here or this analysis site. Or even submit the RunScanner log to to on-line analysis.
  6. Clean your Hosts file (replacing it) with HostsMan tool.
  7. Disable System Restore and then reenable it again.
  8. Immunize your system with SpywareBlaster.
  9. Check if you have insecure applications with Secunia Software Inspector.

Specially step 3 with MBAM could help.

11

Total Security is a bit of a nasty thing to remove so print these instructions out so that Malwarebytes Anti-Malware can run to remove its remnants:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-total-security