Installation Frozen

I am currently installing Avast ANTIVIRUS for the first time ever; however, it seems to have frozen itself at the point of “Installing kernel driver. aswStm” for nearly 2 hours now.

Has anyone else had this issue & you were able to fix it so that the installation can complete?

I would be grateful for any helpful advice. :slight_smile:

Did you remove your old av before installing avast?
Got any other security software installed?
What os/sp are you using?

And please use the search option on this webboard before posting.
A lot of problems are already solved and a lot of questions have already been answered.

I am having the exact same problem. This has happened multiple times. When I try to close the installation windows becomes unresponsive (I can still move the mouse but basically the system crashes because programs don’t respond any more and ctrl-alt-delete won’t work). I have to force restart and then when windows loads again it appears that avast has been installed. I uninstall it, restart, and then try to re-install and I experience the same issue.

Here are the answers to your questions

Did you remove your old av before installing avast? - No. McAfee Security Scan Plus was installed with the OS and the free trial that came with it is up, but I did not uninstall it.
Got any other security software installed? I have Microsoft security essentials and malwarebytes.
What os/sp are you using? - Windows 7 with all updates.

Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender?

If its Security Essentials it should be uninstalled as you shouldnt have two resident Anti-Viruses installed because they could potentially conflict.

Malwarebytes is fine to be installed, as for Mcfee Im not sure what it does exactly however im sure uninstalling it wouldnt hurt in this case.

You think those software are causing the problems with installation?

You should only run 1 anti-virus solution at a time. (MalwareBytes Pro is fine since it works alongside anti-virus and free is on demand)

Other anti-virus can conflict with avast! and cause more harm then good and good results in BSODs etc.

Microsoft Security Essentials and Mcafee are both anti-virus programs which will not work alongside avast! and need to be removed using their respective uninstall tools.

Anti-virus’s has drivers which conflict with other anti-virus programs.

Windows Defender should also be disabled since it’s useless anyways in terms of detection and has low level drivers which could affect avast!

Solved the problem. Uninstalled all other antivirus programs.

I think it was AVG that was causing the problem. I forgot about it. I just removed it and now avast installed without issue.

So it was three active antivirus programs installed on system and avast! was going to be the fourth?

Check out these tips here: http://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB11#artTitle and here: http://antivirus.about.com/b/2007/03/11/clean-quarantine-or-delete.htm

Run the final uninstall tools to ensure all three uninstalled a/v’s are really gone for good. Reboot after running each one. Other is for what to do when your a/v detects a malicious file; read this carefully to avoid major problems with your operating system or broken programs.