Avast On-Access Scanner fails to run.

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I’ve read the faqs the one that states the following:

Q: There´s a red circle on avast! a-ball icon in system tray and when I click on it, the error message appears saying "the AAVM subsystem detected a RPC error". How to fix this?

A: First, use Windows Update to be sure that all Windows components (including “RPC”) is up to date. Then restart your computer and check if the problem persists. If it persists, follow these instructions:

Right-click the icon MY COMPUTER and select MANAGE.
In left column unroll SERVICES AND APPLICATIONS.
Click on SERVICES.
In the right column, look at the state of service avast! Antivirus.
If the service isn’t set to start automatically, set it that way (right-click it and select PROPERTIES and the STARTUP TYPE set to AUTOMATIC). Restart the computer after making the change.
If it was already set to “Automatic”, check the status of the service. If it not “Started”, try to start it (right-click it and select START).
If the service cannot be started, your avast! installation might be corrupted. Try repairing the avast! installation: click START → CONTROL PANEL → ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS → avast! Antivirus → CHANGE/REMOVE and select REPAIR.
This solution works on Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 only.

I’ve checked to ensure that there are NO updates for windows XP sp2. I’ve followed the instructions above Avast service IS set to startup automatically. I’ve repaired Avast. I’ve even uninstalled it, downloaded a fresh copy and reinstalled and now it just refuses to run on access scanners.

This happened today. I turned off on access scanning briefly, then my computer goes kind of skitzo in that I can’t bring up the start menu bar, and opening task manager shows none of the running programs that should be shown in the page showing programs that are running. I notice that explorer.exe isn’t running so I start explorer.exe, but still no programs are shown in the programs page.

I shut down and restart and now task manager is showing all programs that are running but avast on-access refuses to start. It gives me the error and directs me to the page in the faqs that contain the info in the quote above which I have done all of it and it still fails to start on access scanner.

So, what do I do next?

Thanks,

2

One of the most common cause of this is the presence of another AV.

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

3

No, I’ve not installed any other AV programs on this computer. This is the only AV program that’s been installed on this computer since it was reformated and had windows OS installed all fresh and clean last February, so there is no other AV program on this computer.

4

Maybe I need to uninstall Avast and install something like AVG, then scan with that to see if theres something that I’ve downloaded and caught on my computer that is causing Avast to choke on?

The other strange thing is that when I start windows, the security alert comes up and tells me that Avast reports that it might be out of date, so I instruct Avast to update it’s virus def files, and it shows that it does, then it wants to restart so I let it. When windows starts back up again, security alert center pops up again and still says, that Avast is reporting that it might be out of date.

Im baffled. It’s the first problem I’ve had with avast since switching to it from AVG many many blue moons ago.

5

Please, post the last 100-150 lines of avast log: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Setup.log

From time to time, unfortunately, Windows Security Center could bring problems.
See if this helps… http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23457.msg193534#msg193534

6

Check your system time/calender. It won’t help with your first problem, but if wrong, may resolve the out of date notice.

7

Thanks, my computer shows, September 14, 2007 4:43 PM. (I live in the U.S. in California so P.S.T)

Okay well I just decided to uninstall Avast since I was getting nowhere fast with it, and put AVG back on here. I had basically the same problem with AVG in that it wouldn’t run the fulltime scanner. Im not really sure what I did, but I finally managed to make it so that the boxes were not grayed out for starting up the scanner with windows. So, now AVG is running as it should, except that Im told that when trying to update, that the program tells me I might need to reinstall because it might be corrupt (basically the same thing with Avast was doing).

But anyway I managed to scan all the hard drives and found 10 virus’s (all tucked away in zip or rar files and or old vista .eml email files that I’ve kept as backups for when I was running Vista. So none of them were actually active on my machine, so I think I can elminate a virus causing this odd behavior in Avast which is what I thought it was at first. I thought that a virus was screwing with avasts on access scanner to prevent it from running.

Okay so now that all the virus’s have been removed, Im going to uninstall AVG and put Avast back on and see if I can get it going again.

I’ll post back if I still have problems with it after reinstalling it again.

Any clues if there is anything special I must do to uninstall AVG so that it doesn’t cause problems with Avast? Do I just use the regular windows install/uninstall program in the control panel or do I need to do something else to make sure there isn’t anything left over to fight with Avast?

Thanks for the replies.

8

The regular add remove programs should be OK for AVG unlike some others which are almost as hard to get rid of as any virus.

From what you say about the problem with AVG also there may have been malware (hidden by a rootkit) that targets your AV.

Just to make sure it may be worth running some anti-rootkit tools.
Also see, anti-rootkit, detection, removal & protection http://www.antirootkit.com/software/index.htm.

9

I bet on remains of an old installed antivirus and bad removed…

In this case, I bet on virus infection corrupting antivirus files…

Use RevoUninstaller which works better and deeper than Windows Add/Remove and will clean your Registry of leftovers. http://www.revouninstaller.com/ (it’s free).