Black Screen of Death...

NOTE: If anyone has hit this sort of thing, please chime in and add your weight to this issue.

So this weekend I spent 16hrs trying to figure out why my computer would boot to a black screen where I had a mouse pointer and that was it… ctrl-alt-del did nothing. Luckily I had safe mode, and I had a system backup/restore from a week ago. Every time I’d get the system to boot it’d then hang on the next reboot. I eventually stumbled onto disabling everything via msconfig. After that I started adding stuff back, avast refused to start, and because it wouldn’t start it also wouldn’t update. Apparently the service is needed to do an update. It seems this is another known problem. So why am I so pissed?

[ol]- I spent 16hrs working out Avast was the culprit. Maybe there was some sign I missed that would have pointed me at the problem early on.

  • The reason you have me as a paying customer is AVG screwed up worse. They managed to BSOD me before I even hit the login screen for safe mode and normal mode. Rather than just giving up on you, I decided I should give you a shot at fixing this.
  • Maybe there was some other way to fix this, but the only way I found to work was to uninstall using your tool and reinstall losing my settings, and as you know, you guys give a lot of settings in the Suite. I did try reinstalling over the top and that didn’t work.[/ol]

So what am I asking… I’m asking that you look at your product and analyze its failure modes and see if you can’t do better. For instance, if the virus checker can’t start, display a dialog box that states it couldn’t be started. Even better yet, allow the customer to boot after acknowledging at that point so they can resolve it without dropping to safe mode (if they are lucky enough and that works). And best of all, if you can’t boot, gather whatever you need for a bug report automatically.

I’m a developer so I know how it goes… when developing and something breaks, it’s easy to look at only the bug, fix the bug, and move on. In this case please look at this as a structural problem and try to make for a better user experience. Every time you see a system get broken by an internal bug that you manage to catch, please think about how an end user would have had to handle that problem had you shipped it. In all honesty you guys generally do a good job for user experience, so I know you understand the value of this. I’m posting this to support as well in hopes of this being taken as a bug or feature request.

Regards,
-Eric

I have also spent hours debugging a similar issue.

I updated Avast and immediately got issues.

After an update (not sure to which version but about 2 weeks back) Windows would not start up correctly. It would get as far as explorer trying to render the desktop but never complete it. The start button and quick launch icons were not rendered, desktop icons not rendered and ctrl-delete would not bring up program manager. Rebooting and selecting last known good config also failed.

Eventually I rebooted in safe mode and uninstalled avast and everything went back to normal.

Today I decided to try again with a clean Avast install rather than an update.

I downloaded the latest version (7.0.1426.0) and the installation seemed to go well, but then when the installation dialog saying “retrieving information, please wait” was displayed everything locked up. Moving the dialog around gave the familiar duplicated, shadowed images all over the screen since explorer was not rendering anything other than the dialog box (i.e. not clearing the old images away).

I rebooted and got exactly the same issues as I had after the upgrade, i.e. desktop not rendering, nothing launching etc…

Then I tried “last know good configuration” and windows started to launch but then rebooted itself. I tried this a second time with the same result.

Finally I started in safe mode and uninstalled Avast and now I am back to a stable machine.

I too had issues with AVG, so I am now looking for another anti-virus package. >:(

BR,
Steve

@TheBayer

The reason you have me as a paying customer is AVG screwed up worse. They managed to BSOD me before I even hit the login screen for safe mode and normal mode. Rather than just giving up on you, I decided I should give you a shot at fixing this.
@SteveDC
I too had issues with AVG, so I am now looking for another anti-virus package. >:(
Since both situations say 'I used to run AVG, and don't anymore' have you ensured all remnants of AVG is completely gone and deleted? I say this especially since the AVG install was problematic (possibly from the get go) and the uninstall of AVG possibly was not a clean uninstall because of that..

See here for an uninstall tool for AVG and other a/v’s: http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN146 You can use this page to remove any remnants of any a/v you may have used in the past as well.

Note: Avast! will require aswclear.exe to be run in safe mode. Be sure to place the executable on the desktop only!

Let us know if that fixes the problem.

I want to second the first two posts:
Since April, 06, my System doesn’t boot up properly.
It seems the new final version of avast! is a little buggy in some way. Maybe only the update is buggy. Or maybeeeee Windows Vista 64bit is buggy wit the buggy update. Too much insects, if you ask me…
After system recovery to an earlier state, all is working well, until i start internet connection and avast! is starting its automated update.
There is no disclaimer, that this desastrous update is autoupdating the Virus-Database AND the software as well.

I have worked out a solution for me, maybe its useful for some of you too:

  • make sure to disconnect your system from the internet
  • start windows in safe mode
  • do a system recovery back to end of March
  • after windows starts up normally (with avast!), start avast! setup and disable “automated updates”
  • connect your system to the internet

This will prevent avast! to update this buggy final version.

I haven’t tried to manually update only the Virus-Database, maybe this works with the former version of avast!, maybe not…

I have some concerns to manually reinstall the current software version with the new one, because i have read in other forums that this will not solve the problem in some cases! Just now i have a working system with an adequate protection, if it goes wrong, i can’t easily switch back to the former, working, version.

I would highly appreciate any solution or workarround from avast! itself.
Just now i’m a little upset that i have purchased this software rather than used the free version.
One year of my 3 year validation remains and i will use this software until the validation expires.
Maybe longer, if avast! solves the problem as soon as possible.

For the third poster:

I use avast! since the system is set up.
No other Anti Virus tool is used.
The only additional protection running, is Windows Defender. This has coexisted more than 4 years now.

Oh, it’s 2 clean installs ago. So certainly not an issue, I just provided it as color as to my mind state etc. This machine has never seen another virus scanner than Avast. Beyond that, uninstalling Avast with the stand alone uninstaller and then re-installing it clear the issue I was having up. Whatever the issue was in the update got cleared up by a full removal, I expect there was some setting that it destroyed that was causing it to black screen during boot. My focus is more on… solve the general behavior not the specific case. My laptop had an issue a couple weeks before that was almost identical, but eventually I got it resolved without ever being sure what exactly I fixed. My suspicion is that it was Avast too, but no way to be sure now.

-Eric