I’ve disabled avast self defense module before starting the restore process.
The most of the times, system restore fails for me. Now, that it worked, avast got corrupted.
No, it won’t work. The restore will bring avast back to an unstable situation, will bring back files and the registry.
The creation of a restore point does not require the self defense module to be off. It works in both situations, on and off.
If, at least, we can save the settings and restore them back…
But it’s not acceptable, for me and many others, that we need an installation from scratch in these situations.
Windows System Restore has never given me a problem
and use it when needed, I have not had to use WSR since this the last two
updates ‘final’ and ‘BETA’ of avast! but thanks to Tech’s report I will
definitely think twice until resolved!! thank you Tech.
Well… I suppose the “repair” option should be for that: repair a broken installation and avoid having to do it from scratch.
Okay,
I uninstalled avast!, then I did a system restore to a date a couple of days ago. Avast! was back but in control panel I did a repair install and everything went back to normal. I just had to do a definition update.
Good. What does that have to do with shutting off SR and using RB instead? 
This may or may not have something to do with the problem. I was having trouble with my restore points getting corrupted and not able to be defragmented nor removed. I found that the problem was not being caused by Avast but by, get this, Office 2010, in particular the starter edition that came preinstalled and that I had activated. Searching around, I found that the problem can also exist in the full versions of Office 2010. It has to do with that mysterious Q drive that Office creates to enable the new virtualization features of Office 2010. It conflicts with the Volume Copy Shadow Service in Windows 7 and causes restore point corruption. I removed all traces of Office 2010 and installed my old developers edition of Office 2007. It installed, fully updated, and causes no problems with System Restore at all.
I don’t know how many of you use Office 2010 but if you do, it may be causing problems.
Thanks Dch48. I’m with Office 2007 yet.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been using RollBack RX for over a year and would never be without it. It’s too easy and too good. It’s saved my bacon many times. I never could get Windows Restore to work when I really needed it to.
I won’t say never in my case, but, indeed a very rare episode of working. It always fails.
I was using the freeware Comodo Time Machine but it stop being developed and I need to drop it.
Well, System Restore should be stable and reliable; I belive most of it’s problems are AV-related. At the moment I’m on MSE and there are no problems, System Restore works.
How is this information usefull ???
I would never use MSE!
I am a long-time avast user, forced to switch to another AV because of repeating problems with System Restore on my main PC (windows 7/64). At the moment I’m trying MSE, since it seemed to me most likely it shouldn’t have problems with SR. And it works.
While waiting for the problem to be fixed, I’m still using free avast on an old netbook (with Syst. Restore disabled) and testing last beta version on a XP virtual machine (no problems with SR there).
That’s all.
AGAIN… AVAST INSTALLATION GOT TOTALLY CORRUPT AFTER A CORRECT SYSTEM RESTORE.
NOW, OR SYSTEM RESTORE WORKS AND I NEED TO UNINSTALL AVAST AND INSTALL AGAIN, LOSING ALL MY SETTINGS, OR I CAN’T USE SYSTEM RESTORE.
TOO MUCH NEW APPLICATIONS AND FEATURES AND THE OLD AND GOOD ANTIVIRUS PROBLEMS AREN’T BEING SOLVED.
It may seem weird, but I once got around the problem by initiating the system restore
as normal (in Windows XP) and as it rebooted pressed f8 and went into safemode.
Thus, system restore finished up in safemode and it completed OK. Once system restore
was complete (and successful), I rebooted to normal mode.
It seemed as if something during the startup (avast related) was interfering, rather than
something that was running when restore was initiated.
My question is; why do you need to use System Restore so much in the first place? I virtually never use it. I think I’ve tried it three times in 6 years of XP and Win 7 use and I’ve never even installed any other kind of recovery software. I have it turned off on the XP machine now and it’s space allocation is at 1% on this one. I also run a 512mb page file and have never been told it wasn’t enough.
SR is useful for people who like to tinker.
I often try some new software; if I hate it and it’s not what I want, I immediately
uninstall, and for good measure, do a restore to the restore point I made before installing
said software.
“Ideally”, avast should work correctly with System Restore. Why? Because SR is already there, and the bottom line is that users won’t suspect that the problem is in how SR is working or is supposed to work. User will get to the conclusion (whether correct or not, doesn’t matter) that anything else but SR is the culprit.
Moreover, whichever other problems or bugs are there in other software, or drivers, or in the system, users won’t care: bad, bad Avast! ;D
I personally never use SR, and maybe SR is the real problem (or something else), but that doesn’t mean that avast should disregard it (which I’m not so sure they do, as the reporters here seem to believe); if not for something else, then for the simple reaction of users blaming avast.
A possible workaround could be disabling defense module, stop all shields, then disabling the driver and setting the service to stop (not to autorun, and not to run manually; just not to run at all). Then perform the action in SR (going back to a previous SR point). Once all is running, reset the driver and the service as they should and reboot again. Then review that the shields are working. Finally, update avast again (since the SR point may have left you with an older version).
But, if I were in the need to do all that, I would forget about avast, I would perform the SR action and once the system is working, I would simply repair avast and reboot again. The result probably would be the same in most cases.
“Ideally”, it should work correctly with no additional actions. But we live in a real world, and our computers have many conflicts and bugs (and malware). Maybe Avast Software could do better, but let’s not put all the culprit on avast alone, specially when other AV tools have similar issues.
Just to keep everything in perspective, the more a programs evolves (like antiviruses through updates) the more likely system restore will bonk the program. In the past year, I used Avira before avast, and I can tell you system restore would corrupt that installation especially if the system restore point was older and there was a revision to the virus engine in between.
In regards to Avast, I have successfully system restored many times but only with manual restore points less than a day old, so it can be done. Three times just in the last month in fact, b/c I was switching out various network cards to diagnose a connection problem.
It is unrealistic to expect all software installation to remain unscathed from system restore. In general, it is a bad idea to use system restore for anything other than a very recent point. In fact I have seen very well known and expertly written software like Google Chrome become corrupt from system restore.
Really just uninstall the program, and reinstall Avast and move on. The thread moving from legitimate vent, to something else all together.