I open a new topic, since I can’t edit an older response and I can’t have more than three answers in an existing one, being a new user. So, this is reated to the “Avast keeps turning it’s self off” topic and the text is:
After more testing on AVG Free Antivirus, not Avast(but similat behaviour in both), I saw that it starts ok, it works fine and if you stop the shields by ricgt clicking on the tray AVG icon and use the slider, then what is happens is that the avgbIDSAgent process enters the “Stopping” phase and…it gets stuck there. So, when you try to re-enable the AVG shields by using that slider again, the Behaviour and Ransomware shields can’t turn on, because the service that enables them is still stuck in “Stopping” phase, so no you can’t Start it ori anything else, it didn’t get to the phase of Stopped. And this problem appeared since the 25.11 or 25.12 versions of Avast and AVG(I don’t have the 25.11 installers to test it), the 25.10 version with updates blocked by firewall stops and restarts just fine. So, when it gets stuck in “Stopping” mode, you can’t stop it, restart it or anything else, everything is Access Denied even with taskkill in CMD or stop process command from PowerShell in Admin mode.
P.S. Yes, I tried uninstalling, cleaning remnants, clean installing again of both Avast Free Antivirus and AVG Free Anrivirus, same result.
First, I’m an Avast user and not an Avast Team member and Avast Antivirus Free.
I just tried this on the Disable Shields for 10 minutes and was able to right click and re-enable All Shields and it worked as expected. Note there wasn’t an option to disable just the Behaviour and Ransomware Shields.
Thank you for your answer, DavidR! Yes, I disable all the shields for whatever time, 10 minutes, 1 hour in Avast or clicking the slider with Protection is ON in AVG, after right clicking the tray icon. For both of them, the shields are disabled as expected. But, after that, if I reenable the shields, in both of these product, it shows that they are enabled, as expected. BUT, after a minute or less, those two shields show as disabled. And, after I checked the services, I saw that, when turning all the shields off, the avgbIDSAgent service gets stuck in “Stopping” and never gets to the “Stopped” part. And that’s why, after reenabling all the shields, those two shields show as disabled after a minute or less, because that service never really stops or restarts when reenabled in settings. As a quick workaround, as to not fully restart the system every time, I use the “shutdown -L” command in cmd prompt, it fully logs off and I can log in again, with all the services restarted; if I just choose Sign out from the Start Menu and then log in again, the service remains stuck.
P.S. And yes, I do understand and believe that this is not a general problem of Avast or AVG, or way more users would have reported it, but a rare problem, but I believe this is a glitch that can be solved in a future update, seeing that before the 25.11 or 25.12 version it never happened on my system, at least.
You’re welcome.
I can’t speak for AVG it is over 21 years ago that I used it, before I started using Avast.
Whilst AVG and Avast are in the same company now and much of the interface might look similar there are likely to be subtle differences.
AVG also has its own separate Community Forum, at a guess I would think it is community.avg.com, just checked and yes it does on that URL.
You mention both Avast and AVG in your posts.
Can you confirm that you are not using both those AV products on the same machine at the same time. I assume you are not, but just asking.
DavidR, thank you for that link, I will use that too. But, after the problem appeared(and being an Avast user until 2023 -the upgrade messages for the free version became too much for me-), I uninstalled AVG and installed Avast Free Antivirus. And…exactly the same behaviour, so that’s why I came here to post, Avast being the parent company(before they were acquired by Norton). Now Avast and AVG have even the same version numbering(latest is 26.1.10738) and they share pretty much the same behavior; but yes, they are different products and there are a lot of under the hood differences, but the problem seems to be the same in my case. Anyway, that’s why I posted here, because the problem appears with the Avast too.
rocksteady, every time I tested, I did a thorough uninstall for both of them, even searching for remnants, just to be sure. They were not installed at the same time on the system, not even in passive mode. Or any other active antivirus software.
Well this appears to be completely different to your original post ?
Upgrade messages are a regular thing in the free versions - but you can dull them down by changing your settings. This would probably be very similar in AVG, but I haven’t a clue in that as to where it may be in the settings.
Managing pop-up notifications:
https://support.avast.com/article/antivirus-popup-notifications/#pc - Scroll down to Stop offers for other products. - If you use Avast Premium Security, you can additionally stop seeing offers for other Avast products and Personalised Discounts. ** Avast UI > Menu > Settings > Notifications.
Also check the AvastUI > Menu > Settings > General - Notifications, I would suggest using the Pop-up Notifications treatment - Limited Mode.
I would also stop running Smart Scans as this is probably the one area that will suggest paid options for the problems it finds.
DavidR, my original post was in another topic, but community rules bars new users from posting more than three consecutive replies or post links in a single topic, so I had to open a new one to say about that “Stopping” service I observed. So not all the relevant the info in this topic were in the first post, but it was in the old one, named “Avast keeps turning it’s self off”(wich was itself a fork of another topic, with another user posting the original message; messy, I know). Anyway, the main info here is about that service getting stuck in “Stopping” state, if I restart the system or make a “shutdown -L” logoff, the service gets to “Stopped” state and I can turn all the shields on again. Until I try to stop the antivirus again. And I mentioned that AVG service in this topic because, at this stage, I tested with AVG, but I guess the similar service in Avast has the same problem, seeing that Avast has the same behavior on my system with those two shields. The problem appeared with the 25.12 or 25.11 version of AVG and Avast(I tested both products after the problem appeared), but it may well be something from a Windows update in November or December that causes this, I can’t tell for sure.
And yes, now I use that Limited Mode setting for Notifications, but at that time it was not present or I did not find it, so that was the change. And yes, I disabled Smart scan a long time ago, but it is good to know that the setting caused notifications as well."
Technically if you have a reply in in one of those topics, your posts aren’t consecutive in that topic.
I’m not sure how long you would be considered a new user for. This new community has some stiffer rules and this I guess this is to prevent spam. Silly really as posting multiple new topics would achieve the same thing for the spammer.
I really can only speak about the Avast UI and not AVG (which I have never used for over 21 years) since Avast and AVG (plus Norton) merged under much a bigger company.
