How to restart Avast when tray icon is unresponsive?

Sometime after the latest update, Avast had an error and now the tray icon is unresponsive. avastui.exe and avastsvc.exe are taking up all my CPU, roughly 40% each.

I don’t particularly want to restart Windows every time Avast has an issue, so how do I shut down and restart Avast, when avastui is stuck and unresponsive?

Surely there’s a way? I searched around for a while but couldn’t find any mention of how to do that.

If it’s not possible and I need to restart, can someone tell me how to permanently disable the self-defence module so I can kill/restart the process if this happens again (at least until I feel confident it’s stable again)?

you try uninstalling and re-installing avast!

What error ?

Sometimes a reboot will fix any update error or a repair that also involve a reboot. Now you do not want to reboot your comp. Why ? Do you have problems with the OS ?

How to do a repair:

With XP

Start > Control panel > Add & Remove programs > select avast! and click " Change/Remove ". Look for " Repair " and click it.

With Vista or win7

Start > Control Panel > Programs & Features > uninstall a program > select avast! and click " Uninstall/Change ". Look for " Repair "

Reboot when finished.

Thanks for the reply.

I don’t want to reboot every time Avast has an issue, because it’s inconvenient when I have a stack of programs running, have work to do and all I want to do is shut down the problem process that’s hogging the cpu. Hence wondering if there was a way. I take it there isn’t?

Avast usually behaves itself, but I was just wondering in case this happens again.

It is not reconmended to shut avast! self-defense modulo off, but if you must:

Avast! > Settings > troubleshooting > Enable avast! self-defense module

Cheers! It’s only just in case this issue recurs. Once I’m happy it’s stable, it’ll be back on again. :slight_smile: