I have Windows XP SP2. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Come into the 2010s right? OK. Anyhow…) I’ve been using Avast since my first PC in 2001 and have had no complaints. And, I have been happily using the 2014 version 9.0.2021 since October 2014 but the nag screen kept coming up telling me to update to the newest program so I did. I rebooted after the update and, the first thing I noticed was that I could not view my mail messages in the view pane of Windows Live Mail Desktop. I went to Microsoft but got nothing. Just prior to the install of Avast, I was able to view my mail so I wondered: “could it have been Avast? It was the only change I made to the PC.” So I went to Avast help and got nothing. Only some old posting from 2009 where someone else who said installing Avast “broke” their Internet explorer but I got no answer in that thread. Bewildered, I did some more searching at Microsoft and found something about restoring IE settings to defaults so, I tried to open up IE “properties” to get at it’s settings but I got an error message saying that “mshtml.dll was missing” so I could not get into IE properties. The error said I should reinstall IE. But I could not find a place that I could download IE7 anymore. So I called Avast hoping for some help. The agent told me that I most likely had a polymorphic virus (I think that’s what he called it) that goes undetected by the free version and usually preys on people WITH the free version. (Ok. That was the first cha-ching I heard). Everything on my PC worked fine until I installed Avast 2015 and rebooted but he was adamant about Avast not being at fault and then told me this virus makes tons of errors on your system and he wanted to remotely view my errors and then fix the errors which would cost me $99. So I hung up (and thanked him for his time??? What’s wrong with me??? I uninstalled Avast 2015 and reinstalled Avast 2014 but it didn’t help since the damage was already done to IE. And you wouldn’t believe how many Windows programs are dependent on IE for viewing. Not only Windows Live Mail and CHM help files but even the system restore window. In my desperation I tried to do a system restore and the window came up blank white. Thought I was royally screwed but then I got the thought to look in my old saved downloaded files on my PC. Thankfully I had an old download of IE7 from 2010 still in my files. I reinstalled IE7 and everything is now working.
You are running Windows XP 32-bit. Although Internet Explorer 7 will not run on your system, you can download Internet Explorer 7 for other operating systems.
Thanks for putting the link there Eddy but I went to that link yesterday and I got this message on the page: "Internet Explorer 7 is not compatible with your system. " Interesting though that IE7 WAS compatible but the one I had on my system since 2010. Not the ones they are offering now.
P.S. I just saw the second link you put to oldversions.com. Thanks. I just grabbed another copy of IE7. Maybe helpful to someone else too.
GREAT!!! Another problem. The browser feature removed my Firefox addons without my permission such as "Adblock plus and the cookie/pop up add on that I forgot the name of and will have to hunt down so I can reinstall it. So now I’m viewing ads and flashing banners and soft porn on websites and getting pop ups. Perfect. How does that enhance my security?
And if you want to get updates for xp that are released after Microsoft “stopped” support for it…
Adding the below key to the registry will let you get all updates. Ofcourse get them at your own risk. Best is to create a image of the drive before downloading/installing them in case anything goes wrong.
You seriously have me thinking about this now. Can I ask a few questions?
Will I have to reformat my hard drive or can I install SP3 OVER SP2?
And also, you mention creating an image. What software creates an image? Always had a problem doing that using Nero so I never bothered after that. I just back up my entire system to an external HDD every couple of weeks or so but I know that’s not the same as an image. An image can restore the operating system if need be, right?
Yo can always do a Google search of “backup software” or “free backup software”.
Personally I use an external HDD with 1 TB of storage. I have 4 generations of
backups on it at any given time.
Thanks. I did a search and I found the one you used (Aomei) but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. Kept reporting bad sectors and stopped the process. I did a boot up check disk but it still wouldn’t create the image. I may use it for regular file back up though. It’s kind of nice. I found Acronis and it did an image nicely for me.
I have been hemming and hawing for a few years to update to SP3. Worries about software and hardware incompatibilities always stopped me. But I finally took the plunge. Installed SP3 and got the updates including IE8. Don’t know how you moved me to action Eddy. Must have been that Green Beret looking cap in your avatar :). I also did an image of the C drive when it had SP2 and will do one of this one with SP3.
All the best,
Annette
One more thing. Sad to say but also glad to say, I also made a change in my AV software after all these years after this recent experience with Avast. I switched over to AVG. I did a scan and AVG caught 7 problems that Avast did not catch. One was not a problem but the other 6 definitely were. Anyhow…
I had a customer today with virtually identical symptoms. An Avast update killed IE8 (In this case it was IE8) and he also had XP SP3 and a nice clean machine 1 month ago.
I could not get into the internet settings (told me they had been disabled by a policy)
Could not manage user accounts in Control Panel - just a white screen
IE stopped working - loaded but would not go to any web pages
Every time I tried to open a page in FF and Chrome it asked to save the HTML page as a file on the computer.
System restores were broken
I tried:
Uninstalling IE8 - would not uninstall as it was put on pre-SP3
No option to uninstall SP3 so tried to reinstall it. Seemed to work right up until reboot time. Then during the boot the OOBE process kicked in and IE8 offered to save the websites html file again so the SP3 would not reinstall.
Ran SFC - fixed nothing
Ran Chkdsk /f - fixed nothing
ran FRST - only things installed in last 30 days were Avast files (assume it did a program update)
Re-associated htm , chm, and html with IE - fixed nothing
Spent hours on it but no avail
I installed the system originally about 1 month ago and all was perfect. IE worked - updates worked - user accounts worked. IE worked, FF and Chrome both worked.
Ended up having to do a repair of XP (reinstall over existing installation rather than repair console), reapply SP3 and 100’s of updates.
Was fine after that.
I had my suspicions that Avast update had trashed his machine but did not want to believe it. Now I hear your story I totally believe it.
As for your tale about support. This is common and Avast should be ashamed. I have made complaints myself on this forum and to Avast but it seems the bad practice is like a cancer in the 3rd party support company they employ.
OK then. I’m glad I posted my experience here then. In the past, I usually uninstalled the older version of Avast and did a fresh install of the new version because I’ve had problems when Avast updated the program over my existing Avast. But since the update of the program went well in October when Avast updated to the 2014 version, I thought I’d let Avast do a program update “over” the older version this time too. Don’t know if that was part of the problem but why “attack” Internet Explorer. Oh yeah, and a similar thing happened to me with Interent Explorer. It stopped working. I needed to download a fresh copy of IE but didn’t know the version so I opened IE browser but it wouldn’t go anywhere and wouldn’t let me open the:“About Internet Explorer” in the menu to find out which version it was.
I just learned from this experience how many Windows programs are dependent upon IE and, having XP SP2 made getting information from Microsoft and getting downloads difficult. A good thing came out of this though. I finally updated my OS to XP SP3.
Anyhow, thanks Paul for posting your experience so I know I’m not alone with this.
I uninstalled Avast 2015 and reinstalled Avast 2014 but it didn’t help since the damage was already done to IE. And you wouldn’t believe how many Windows programs are dependent on IE for viewing. Not only Windows Live Mail and CHM help files but even the system restore window. In my desperation I tried to do a system restore and the window came up blank white. Thought I was royally screwed but then I got the thought to look in my old saved downloaded files on my PC. Thankfully I had an old download of IE7 from 2010 still in my files. I reinstalled IE7 and everything is now working.