Installed Providers Not Accessible

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have just installed Avast! Home on a friends machine and for some reason the Resident Protection Status is: inactive and when I press start nothing happens.

Then when I click on ‘Details … >>’ all the providers show up in gray (with status: ‘No task is currently using this provider’). When I try to start the task I get an error windows saying: ‘The requested resident task was not found - The operation could not be completed.’

I have tried to uninstall and reinstall Avast! Home, but it does not seem to make any difference.

Any suggestions anyone?

2

What machine (operating system) is it?

3

Windows 98SE

4

If you go to Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs / avast! Antivirus / Change / Change - do you see the resident providers (Internet Mail, Standard Shield, …) installed there (checked by a green mark)?

5

All resident providers have a green tick, except ‘The Bat!’.

I also should have mentioned that the Avast system tray icon has a red circle (like a prohibited sign) in the bottom left corner.

6

So, if you check your avast! installation folder, there are the following files there, rigth?
aswMon9x.dll, Aswmon.vxd, Ahresstd.dll, Ahresmai.dll, Ahruimai.dll, Ashmaisv.exe

7

They are all there and just in case here is the directory listing:

Volume in drive C has no label
Volume Serial Number is 384E-8054
Directory of C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4

. 06/05/04 15:19 .
… 06/05/04 15:19 …
DATA 06/05/04 15:19 DATA
ENGLISH 06/05/04 15:19 ENGLISH
IMAGES 06/05/04 16:19 images
SETUP 06/05/04 16:18 Setup

AAVM4H DLL 159,744 27/04/04 7:22 AAVM4H.DLL
AAVMGUIH DLL 192,512 27/04/04 7:24 AAVMGUIH.DLL
AAVMRPCH DLL 19,968 27/04/04 7:21 AAVMRPCH.DLL
AHRESMAI DLL 18,432 27/04/04 7:22 AHRESMAI.DLL
AHRESMES DLL 18,432 27/04/04 7:22 AHRESMES.DLL
AHRESOUT DLL 19,968 27/04/04 7:24 AHRESOUT.DLL
AHRESP2P DLL 17,920 27/04/04 7:22 AHRESP2P.DLL
AHRESSTD DLL 30,208 27/04/04 7:25 AHRESSTD.DLL
AHRUIMAI DLL 61,440 27/04/04 7:23 AHRUIMAI.DLL
AHRUIMES DLL 19,968 27/04/04 7:22 AHRUIMES.DLL
AHRUIOUT DLL 94,208 27/04/04 7:23 AHRUIOUT.DLL
AHRUIP2P DLL 19,456 27/04/04 7:22 AHRUIP2P.DLL
AHRUISTD DLL 57,344 27/04/04 7:25 AHRUISTD.DLL
ASHBASE DLL 217,088 27/04/04 7:17 ASHBASE.DLL
ASHCFGP DLL 81,920 27/04/04 7:20 ASHCFGP.DLL
ASHCFGT DLL 131,072 27/04/04 7:19 ASHCFGT.DLL
ASHCHEST DLL 135,168 27/04/04 7:19 ASHCHEST.DLL
ASHOUTXT DLL 176,128 27/04/04 7:24 ASHOUTXT.DLL
ASHSHELL DLL 9,728 27/04/04 7:21 ASHSHELL.DLL
ASHSODBC DLL 36,352 27/04/04 7:17 ASHSODBC.DLL
ASHSXML DLL 12,800 27/04/04 7:17 ASHSXML.DLL
ASHTASK DLL 94,208 27/04/04 7:17 ASHTASK.DLL
ASHUINT DLL 253,952 27/04/04 7:19 ASHUINT.DLL
ASWAUX DLL 20,480 27/04/04 7:17 ASWAUX.DLL
ASWCMNB DLL 102,400 27/04/04 7:15 ASWCMNB.DLL
ASWCMNOS DLL 34,816 27/04/04 7:14 ASWCMNOS.DLL
ASWCMNS DLL 151,552 27/04/04 7:15 ASWCMNS.DLL
ASWENGIN DLL 692,224 27/04/04 7:17 ASWENGIN.DLL
ASWSCAN DLL 77,824 27/04/04 7:15 ASWSCAN.DLL
ASWIDLE DLL 4,608 26/02/04 21:33 aswIdle.dll
ASWINTEG DLL 20,480 27/04/04 7:17 ASWINTEG.DLL
ASWMON9X DLL 25,600 27/04/04 7:24 ASWMON9X.DLL
ASWMONTH DLL 4,512 27/04/04 7:23 ASWMONTH.DLL
ASWRES DLL 126,976 27/04/04 7:14 ASWRES.DLL
AVCOMMEX DLL 102,400 27/04/04 7:22 AVCOMMEX.DLL
AVSSHOOK DLL 6,656 27/04/04 7:19 AVSSHOOK.DLL
UNACEV2 DLL 75,776 09/01/04 9:10 unacev2.dll
XERCES DLL 1,048,576 09/01/04 9:10 xerces.dll
XT1922 DLL 897,024 26/02/04 21:34 XT1922.dll

ASWREG~1 EXE 22,016 16/09/03 11:27 aswRegSvr.exe
ASHAVAST EXE 278,576 27/04/04 7:21 ASHAVAST.EXE
ASHBUG EXE 143,360 27/04/04 7:21 ASHBUG.EXE
ASHCHEST EXE 26,112 27/04/04 7:20 ASHCHEST.EXE
ASHDISP EXE 98,352 27/04/04 7:24 ASHDISP.EXE
ASHLOGV EXE 20,992 27/04/04 7:21 ASHLOGV.EXE
ASHMAISV EXE 200,752 27/04/04 7:24 ASHMAISV.EXE
ASHPOPWZ EXE 192,512 27/04/04 7:24 ASHPOPWZ.EXE
ASHQUICK EXE 241,664 27/04/04 7:21 ASHQUICK.EXE
ASHSERV EXE 69,680 27/04/04 7:24 ASHSERV.EXE
ASHSIMPL EXE 176,176 27/04/04 7:21 ASHSIMPL.EXE
ASHSKPCC EXE 18,944 27/04/04 7:20 ASHSKPCC.EXE
ASHSKPCK EXE 61,440 27/04/04 7:20 ASHSKPCK.EXE
ASWBOOT EXE 260,096 27/04/04 7:26 ASWBOOT.EXE
ASWUPDSV EXE 53,248 27/04/04 7:18 ASWUPDSV.EXE
SCHED EXE 5,120 26/02/04 21:43 sched.exe

ASWMON VXD 29,262 26/02/04 21:41 aswMon.vxd

DEFTASKS XML 10,038 31/03/04 13:50 DefTasks.xml

    58 file(s)      7,178,260 bytes
     6 dir(s)        3,212.19 MB free
8

Did you install any other antivirus in your machine? Which one?
Did you uninstall it before installing avast?
Do you use a firewall? :wink:

9

We used to have AVG installed, but uninstalled it prior to installing avast. We use ZoneAlarm (not latest version) as a personal firewall.

10

Please, try the following:
In the \Data folder, there is avast4.ini file. Open this file in Notepad, find the item Database=ODBC and change it to Database=XML (and save the changes).
Now, restart the computer.
Does it have any (positive) effect?

11

Igor, may I ask why isn’t this the ‘default’ option of avast?
What will we loose in VRDB?

12

It has nothing to do with VRDB - the database is used for storing the info about tasks (their configurations) and session (past results). In the Enhanced User Interface, the session results are not stored if XML database is specified.

13

Can we edit this file?
I open it with MS Access but nothing appears ::slight_smile:

14

I have no idea…
Well, when the info is stored there, it should be possible to edit - but I don’t know anything about the internal structure or format of the information. Simply, I wouldn’t recommend it :wink:

15

It’s a pity :cry:
If we can edit we can configure (like the avast4.ini file) :-\

16

Sorry abou the long delay in coming back to you, but my friend did not dare to make those change as instructed over the phone so I had to find time to go and do it myself.

Anyway, it works, thank you very much. Can you explain what would have caused the problem.

17

Glad to hear it works.
It seems that there is a problem with Microsoft Jet drivers on the computer - so avast! cannot correctly access its database to read the information about the resident task.
You may consider to update/reinstall the Jet drivers (MDAC) - downloadable from Microsoft. If everything works well, though, you probably don’t have to worry.