running avast free 5.29.58392 on Win XPSP3 Yesterday worked fine. Shut down pc overnite. This morning avast did not load. I brought it up manually and it displayed UNSECURED and the FIX button did nothing. Tried to start from SERVICES and got “Error 3 The system cannot find the path specified” I then did Eset Online Scan that said it deleted two win32 trojans. Then spybot, SOS, and MRT found nothing. So how do I get avast working again?
Where did you get this build ?
The latest version is avast 5.0.677.
First try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow.
If that doesn’t work I would suggest a clean reinstall:
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Download the latest version of avast, 5.0.677 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/setup_av_free_eng.exe and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn’t save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.
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Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, aswClear5.exe find it here and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for both 4.8 and 5.0).
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- Now uninstall avast! (using add remove programs, if you can’t do that start from the next step), reboot.- 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility from safe mode, first for 4.8 if previously installed and then for 5.0, once complete reboot into normal mode.- 3. install the latest version, reboot.
What did the on-line scan say it found, file name, location and malware name ?
I didn’t see a way to save the info, I should have copied it to a file, I remember it was a win32 variation they called a trojan. Both were in the files of SMARTWHOIS, an outdated app I should have deleted long ago. I got this version from the avast site when the upgrade was offered. I believe it updated the program a time or two but right now the ABOUT info says prog ver 5.29.58392 and database version UNKNOWN. Now I believe I dealt with these same trojans before- I was forced to restore to a previous system state backup from September. (this was unfortunate in several ways) Whenever I do a backup I try to have a clean system, so I cannot say for sure that I restored to a malware state. Are you telling me tat this version doesn’t exist? ??? I will do the remedy you suggested soon as I can. Thank you for the swift reply.
I’m saying I don’t recognise that build format as it is generally as shown one whole ordinal, a point ordinal and a build number of up to 4 numbers, e.g. 0.0.0000.
See image extract of what my about avast looks like (right click on the avast tray icon).
I didn’t get to fix it yet but, if u are avast tech and you don’t recognize the build, something is very wrong somewhere ?
Do you know where you downloaded the original Avast install file? Do you still have it on your machine? It seems you have installed something questionable at best.
I’m an avast user like yourself, though I have been using avast for over six and a half years.
So if you do as I suggest, right click on the avast tray icon (bottom right of the screen) and select about avast! does the information that you see match my image extract ?
I’ve been running avast for several years also. I updated the program when the gui gave me a message and a link. R click on the taskbar opens the same about page with the info above. I am now uninstalling and deleting the remnants then d/l from the alwil page. I did not save the exe file.
I would go for the Repair option first if you haven’t already tried that.