Avast!: Unknown Error

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have Avast! Home version 4.8 Home, Build Dec2008 (4.8.1296), Xtreme Toolkit 1.9.4.0, Active Skin version 4.2.7.3
VPS Version : 081230 - 0

Laptop, HP, AMD Turion64 X2, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB internal and 160 GB external Hard Disk

Vista SP1, with all the latest updates installed till 30/12/2008.
Avast is running in the system tray, the blue icon with ‘a’ showing, mouse over shows - avast! On-Access Scanner: 6 provider(s) total, 6 running, I am able to scan individual file via right click menu.

Vista security center shows in Virus Protection:

avast! antivirus reports that it is turned off.
When I click on turn on now, It asks me if I trust the program. (UAC)
I click on yes, i trust this program, and am ready to run it…
After confirmation, avast! comes up with this error…
avast!: Unknown error.
Program cannot activate resident part (Standard Shield provider not found)

What should I do? Is resident scanner working on my computer? If not, how can I activate it?

2

Welcome to the forums, drmonks. :slight_smile:

Try a repair of avast. The steps below are for XP (I do not use Vista) but I feel sure you can find the equivalent in Vista. You must be connected to the internet to do this.

My Computer > Control panel > Add/remove programs > scroll down to avast! > click on Change or Remove > scroll down to and click on Repair > click on OK > follow the directions given.

I hope this helps you.

3

No, this does not help…
One more thing I think may be important…
Nortan Antivirus came bundled with my computer. Although I have not used it, and have uninstalled it on the very first run of the computer…

4

That one more thing, is very important and is most likely the root cause of this problem.
Norton can be an absolute pig to remove.

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

5

I did run SymNRT tool as explained.
Restarted my computer.
But still the same error…

avast! : Unknown Error
Program could not activate resident part. (Standard shield Provider Not found)

6

just uninstall and reinstall avast.your avast might be corrupted

7

Please, if possible, post the last 300-350 lines of avast log: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Setup.log

8

here is the log file…

to mathboyx215 - already done that in past. Thanks for the help.

While I was in this folder I noticed this… warning log…'am attaching it…

9

Except the last updates, it’s working fine and installing fine… weird uh?
Is your HOSTS file ok, clean? (you can open it in Notepad and post its contents here).
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

10

Sorry, but I didn’t get you…
Am posting the hosts file.
My problem is resident scanner not starting…
Avast updates just fine…shows me virus database is updated… daily…

11

My fault, not yours.

It’s ok.

I can’t imagine what is blocking avast to work… except remains of old antivirus installation…

12

Thanks to all who helped…specially Tech…
Yesterday after posting the hosts file, I was playing around with the setting of avast!
It occurred to me that there should be 7 providers total for on access scanner, but avast showed only six…The seventh was standard shield provider…
I went to change avast setup from add/remove panel and there it was… A big cross in front of standard shield…
A don’t know how it happened, as I had chosen default settings while installing everytime…
Maybe previous registry entry of Norton had prevented avast from installing it…
I changed the cross to tick mark, avast installed a small file (?96 kb), restarted… and voilla…!!
Now security center shows avast fully functional…
The avast! icon in tray shows seven providers, all working…

Thanks once again to all who helped with prompt reply…

13

It is good to know you have your problem solved. :slight_smile:

14

There is a great chance of Norton being culprit…