I reinstalled Avast18.8 on my Vista build. This didn’t go well. Uninstall was fine, but while reinstalling I got a BSOD and auto reboot. Then the OS was unbootable!
Usually before making any changes I create an Image backup, but not this time. I restored a 7 month old Image & copied the data from the defunct current build that I had saved before overwriting the partition.
On boot, Avast reported my license expired so I need to renew. I’ve posted on this boefore: When you select you want to renew Avast Free instead of upgrading nothing happens. So you have to reinstall to get another year’s worth of service.
I reinstalled. Then I did an online virus defs update. Avast also uploaded something: It was a new interface which makes Avast18.8 look the same as newer versions. I don’t know if that’s all that was uploaded
Each boot, when I check the status while Avast is loading, I get ‘need to reactivate’. Then fully 20 seconds later, ‘you are protected’ . So that’s 20 seconds with the OS unusable. This behavior is something recent, maybe the last month or so. That is, it was there in the defunct current build. Maybe I should have used the Avast Removal Tool before the reinstall?
AvastSvc seems to have calmed down. After initialize it uses much less CPU resources, down in the
10-20% range unless scanning.
Most likely, there were some virus defs updates that were bad recently and this was reflected in vpsupd. Goingfrom the 2018 database tdirectly to the current 250206-06 update skipped all the ones in between.
The BSOD I’m guessing is from the SSD. This is only 1 year old, and memory is Micron (not Chinese) so I would have expected better reliability. There wasn’t enough time to read the BSOD screen before the auto reboot happened
Actually, there may be paid users for Avast18.8. I read somewhere that ATMs still use WinXP. This was the reason for WinXP POS-Ready (embedded). POS is Point-of-sale. Somebody paid for that WinXP update after WinXP was officially dead.