As a regular contributor to the MS WGA forums, I have repeatedly had to tell people running Vista to uninstall Avast v6, as it causes Kernel and Mod-Auth Tampers which break validation in Vista.
Avast has so far neither acknowledged the problem, nor stated that they can even see it.
Might I suggest that a couple of developers hang around the Vista WGA forum for a few days, and see the list of bodies that has already appeared, and the ones that keep on appearing?
… still weird that such an issue happened in the first place, I didn’t know that at all. Actually when I read the changelog bit about Vista, I was really wondering what it was about.
In fact I’ve seen it happen a couple of times here on Seven. But Seven has got the WAT update (that doesn’t just verify, but repairs if necessary) so it’s never been a problem… issue was already gone after login in.
Happened not that long ago, but I can’t remember if there was suspicion of any Avast interference (ie after a boot scan, an uninstall/re-install etc…).
I only wish that was true - Certainly a simple update doesn’t fix it. Avast must first be uninstalled, then SP2 installed, and then Avast reinstalled - and if the user is VERY lucky, it’ll work.
What makes it worse is that there was a similar (though not identical) problem when v4.5 (IIRC) came out - and at that time I again was having to advise people to uninstall Avast.
…again, it took months before a ‘fix’ was put in the system.
FWIW, this issue was also reported in these forums back in April(?)
The poster then (who I’d referred here) later told me that Avast ‘could not repro’ the problem. All they had to do was show up in the WGA forums and ask questions of anyone affecte there - but no. SILENCE and the appearance of the ostrich.
I’m fed up with telling people to uninstall what I consider to be one of the better AV’s because of what should be fairly simple problems, that they have now twice failed to solve in acceptable periods of time.
Hi NoelDP
I had no idea the problem was widespread. I didn’t pay too much attention to that post in
“April(?)” (May 8 ) because I don’t know of anyone running earlier-than-SP2 Vista.
yeah but that’s a beta, not supposed to be widely adopted right now + vlk didn’t explicitly precise that the fix was for Windows activation issues (although that’s very probable).
There are millions? of Vista users without issues but that does not lessen the impact for those who do have problems.
I used Eset for a long time but switched due to an issue with Vista that a few had.
Yes, the new version (which will be officially released soon, and is currently available as a beta) is supposed to fix that problem.
Vista is very sensitive about injections to its “antipiracy” process (slsvc.exe). You touch the process, and it starts yelling. Obviously, MS has re-architected that in W7 though.
If anyone having the issue could actually test the beta and report back if the problem is really solved, it would be greatly appreciated.
The proposal of the OP was exactly the opposite: Avast Team could/should participate at those MS forums to “publish” the new beta, minimize the impact of those “uninstall Avast completely and forget about it” suggestions, and finally Avast could have some more testers about the issue.
Since the issue is actually a crashed system, I don’t think that users are waiting for the stable release. They either accept using a beta (if they actually know that the issue may be resolved), or they change to a different tool.
Avast should had released a new stable with at least this issue resolved (and any already solved critical problems), if not for the users of Vista “pre SP2”, for the bad PR. All the “extra” (read, non-critical improvements) could have wait in the beta step. Just my opinion.
The problem is not a ‘crash’, it’s simply that the system registers as being non-genuine. In RTM Vista, this makes the Desktop inaccessible, and also disallows access to the Control Panel - which confuses the heck out of people when you tell them to uninstall Avast, unless you point to the alternative methids of doing so. The problem is NOT confined to TRM or SP1, though - there are a small number of cases in SP2, so this needs also to be addressed. It’s not as if any of these systems are new technology - SP2 came out in 2009 - so why is Avast failing in its duty of care for its clients’ systems?
Most users want to get access back to their ystem more than anything else - and a failed AV does not inspire confidence, so they are less likely to reinstall it than to get one of the alternatives (I’ve been pointing them to MSE as a consequence - I don’t like AVG any more, and I don’t have enough experience or faithin AntiVir, or anything else)
as someone above said, the result is not a system crash. It’s Windows reporting as having detected an “unauthorized modification”.
We would have released the update earlier if only the problem would have been solved earlier. The main problem was to actually get a computer with the problem simulated. If you look at the MSFT forums, you may fall into the impression that the problem affected pretty much all Vista users. But this is simply not the case… we tried tens of various Vista installations, with various HW and SW configurations, and were simply not able to reproduce the problem. This is probably because the licensing checks are done only “randomly”, as one of the MSFT forum moderators pointed out… which makes its testing very tough.
OK, my apologies. Generally speaking, not all cases were complete crashes. But the bottom line still remained: a user in such situation was “highly bothered” or “highly uncomfortable” with a security tool installed while having Windows throwing those messages. Most users won’t continue using their systems in such a situation, and uninstalling Avast was their most simple solution (hence, not using Avast and not waiting for an update and causing PR problems).
2. We would have released the update earlier if only the problem would have been solved earlier. The main problem was to actually get a computer with the problem simulated. If you look at the MSFT forums, you may fall into the impression that the problem affected pretty much all Vista users. But this is simply not the case.... we tried tens of various Vista installations, with various HW and SW configurations, and were simply not able to reproduce the problem. This is probably because the licensing checks are done only "randomly", as one of the MSFT forum moderators pointed out... which makes its testing very tough.
I agree that identifying the problem probably wasn’t simple, since it was not under all Vista systems. But you have posted that the problem was resolved already a few days ago, and the final stable version was not still released. So the PR and technical problems continued for some days. Probably most users that had the problem don’t even know that there is a new stable release solving the issue. In such “critical” cases (both technical and PR situations), my point was that publishing a new stable ASAP, and delaying the noncritical additions, would had stopped at least “some” of those BSODs and bad PR (specially when you can post in those other forums that a stable realease is available so to solve the initial problem, with no workarounds).
I’m sure that Avast Team has valid reasons to have it delayed some additional days until 6.0.1203 was finally published. Of course my opinion was based on what I know, and for sure I don’t know “all” the reasons for the delay.
I only hope this “was” a problem, and that it won’t come back :). It will help if Avast Team can go to those other forums and make clear that a new stable release resolves it.
…And the body-count is still rising -and it seems to be getting WORSE rather than better.
PLEASE - someone from Avast actaully PARTICIPATE in the WGA Forums - it’s not that difficult ;0
