Avast not recognised

Hi,

I have avast home ed. I did a system check on my Vista lapt top and got a secruity message

on-access antivrus scannning is disabled. I have tried to do this from avast and my pc. However I can’t find out what to do.

Is the avast ‘a’ icon in the notification area ?

What avast processes are running in Task Manager, they begin with ash or asw, see image ?

It is Vista…not all will be displayed so easily, because they changed it…::slight_smile:

What you will see in vista is this (well, at least this is what I see):

Processes tab:

  • ashDisp.exe

Services tab:

  • aswUpdSv → this will be aswUpdSv.exe
  • avast! antivirus → this will be ashServ.exe
  • avast! Mail Scanner → this will be ashMaiSv.exe
  • avast! Web Scanner → this will be ashWebSv.exe

Hi thanks for the reply

The ‘a’ is at bottom right and turns…I can do a thourough scan no problem. In fact it appears to be working okay…apart from the message in my vista system report.

The task manager shows
ashDisp.exe
ashMaiSv.exe
ashServ.exe
ashWebSv.exe
aswUpdSv.exe

As long as I know that I am protected with avast I could ignore message but would like to know I am getting it.

The Vista Security Center (VSC), seems to inherit the flakiness of the XP Windows Security Center in that it fails to either recognise or believe the AV isn’t running, but you shouldn’t ignore it completely.

Try this to see if you can’t repair the VSC, I’m not sure if this is the same for Vista, it does work on XP:

* Click Start, Run and type CMD.EXE
  • Type this command and press Enter:

net stop wscsvc
net stop winmgmt

  • Using Windows Explorer, rename the folder %windir%\System32\Wbem\Repository. (For example, %windir%\System32\Wbem\Repository_bad.). %windir% represents the path to the Windows directory, which is typically C:\Windows.

  • Switch to Command Prompt window, and type the following and press ENTER after each line:

net start winmgmt
net start wscsvc

EXIT
Reboot

  • Also see a topic created by Tech on this, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23457.0.
  • Also this, check system variables - I found out why windows didn’t recognized avast as my AV. It turned out that my Path environment variable had been messed up and it missed the “C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;” part.

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
This can have an impact on the VSC.

Thanks David

I used to have Norton. I deleted it from control panel. Then checked ‘computer’ did a search for Norton a couple of things came up there so I deleted them.

Will doing the start run thingy (not pc literate I’m afraid!) and changing/renaming the path be okayon vista? I know that vista can be fickle to changes .

Norton can be a real pig to remove everything.

A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT

You don’t have to change the path thingy, all that is there for is to show where the repository folder is so you can navigate to it using windows explorer.

The Windows Start (may be different in Vista, it is the button on the bottom left of the screen) opening the Run will display a window that commands can be entered, you only need to enter cmd.exe. Now you have a command screen that you can type the commands in the quoted text.

Hi,
Just to reinforce, here is the summary of my experience trying to solve the problem (in Windows XP SP3):

First, renaming or deleting the repository folder didn’t seem to work, even after repeated boots (carefully followed Tech’s post instructions)
Then, I tried the ‘next best’ suggestion in the forum, but couldn’t run “rundll32 wbemupgd, UpgradeRepository” to upgrade the repository
Finally, found out that it was because the PATH variable was messed up - MendeleyDesktop had put itself first in line, so I had to edit PATH and let “%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%” be back in the beginning of the line again. See http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37876 for an example of how to do it.
That sorted the problem and after upgrading the repository, it seems to be fine again (the security alert is gone and both AV and firewall are recognised again).
Thanks everybody! Good luck to those still trying.

brasa, thanks for posting. Hope my directions help in anyway.