I’m trying to help a friend I recommended avast! to.
She sent me this question, and I don’t get any results when I google the error message, so I thought I’d post it here.
I will turn on the auto update with her, but I’m not sure it’s going to help!
Does anyone have a clue as to what’s going on here?
She has a wireless router with a PC and laptop, both XP.
No third party firewall - as of yet.
“This red box pops up a few times a day. It says Avast information. An error has occurred while attempting to update. Click here…. Then it says “Cannot connect to download 738.avast.com (unknown 80), total time (the amount of time is different each time). I don’t have the auto update on so I’m curious as to what it is.”
This does sound like firewall blocking, but shouldn’t happen if they haven’t got a 3rd party firewall as XP’s firewall has no outbound protection.
So the only thing I can think of is:
Does your friend use a proxy to connect to the internet (some ISP may insist on this) ?
What is her ISP ?
Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
It is most certainly an error not to have auto updates enabled, the avast VPS updates are measured in KBs not MBs as they are incremental. This avoids the remembering to manually update and keeps signatures fully up to date.
Try this - AVG8.x Remover, download tool from here, http://www.avg.com/download-tools there is a 32bit and 64 bit windows version, ensure you use the correct one.
AVG no longer appears in Add/Remove - will the dedicated uninstaller run without AVG installed and just remove the traces?
Also, the updater was working until about the time her computer was infected - around July 23 or 24.
The last virus definitions file is dated July 23 -
makes me think it’s not a trace of AVG.
And the plot thickens.
This is her latest email to me:
[i]"I ran Avast and it completed its scan. However a box with a RED X popped up that said “Cannot connect to 9698sm.avast.com (174.133.30.202:80)
you are not connected to the internet
your firewall does not allow the program “avast”.setup” to access the internet; you can find details or help or read FAQ
your HTTP proxy settings are incorrect
the server is inaccessible because of a network error or maintenance"[/i]
Which was your old antivirus (before avast)? How did you uninstall it?
Which is your firewall? Is avast.setup allowed to connect?
Please, post the last 300-350 lines of avast log: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Setup.log
result: 0x20000004 means that avast can’t access the update server. This again appears to be either you have a third-party firewall (which you said there isn’t) or there are still remnants of the old Anti-virus on the machine.
You’re sure that she ran the AVG removal tool, and re-booted before trying the avast installation?
I still haven’t sent her the link for the removal tool.
Does it make sense that avast! would update fine for 21 days and then suddenly stop because of traces of an AVG install removed the same day that avast! was originally installed?
I don’t see it . . .
but I’ll forward the link to her anyhow if you really think it could be the issue.
I’ll have to call her and walk her thru the uninstaller d/l and running it. That’s why I’m hesitating to do this.
Conflicts don’t have a predictable time frame when it may occur it just needs some situation within the computer to change to bring the conflict into play.
All we are doing is ensuring that there are no remnants that could cause a conflict, to take that out of the equation.
