Missing WS2_32.DLL & Menus Don't Work

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I just installed avast 4.7 on my Win95 machine (don’t ask!).

During boot an error dialog pops up saying it cannot find WS2_32.DLL … clicking OK causes a new dialog to appear immediatly with the same message … but clicking OK a second time clears screen and boot appears to proceed in normal fashion.

Activating avast works nominally, I can run scans, but the three menu options at the top left (Tools,Settings,Help) ignore my clicks (they highlight when moused over, but nothing opens when I click)

Using the avast repair facility from the Control Panel doesn’t help.

Could not find the missing .DLL on my windows 95 disk, but it’s probably hiding in a cab somplace and I don’t know how to search these.

I’m limping along with my win95 until I get a new machine but would like to improve my virus protection until then.

2

A google search returns many hits for ws2_32.dll here are a couple http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/files/ws2_32/, http://www.ascentive.com/support/new/trouble_ws2.phtml

As you can see it isn’t an avast file but an OS file Winsock2 file.

3

Those refs to download WS2_32.DLL worked great. I’m no longer getting the error message that it’s missing as I boot up.

Thanks.

Unfortunately the other problem is still there so must have been unrelated.

However, my first installation was without skins. When I uninstalled avast then reinstalled it with its default skin I was able to access all of the features. So there could be a bug in the non-skin version that maybe nobody has noticed if most people use skins. I’ll notify Alwil directly to see what they say.

4

Glad I could help, welcome to the forums.

Sorry I missed your second problem.

Activating avast works nominally, I can run scans, but the three menu options at the top left (Tools,Settings,Help) ignore my clicks (they highlight when moused over, but nothing opens when I click)

I have to admit to being confused as to where these Tools, Settings and help were ?
Now I’ve found them, you didn’t say you were using the No Skin interface at first. So perhaps that is where the problem is with No Skin & win95 ???

If it is a bug somehow I don’t realistically see a lot of time being devoted to it if you reported it, especially since the skins work and win95 is somewhat long in the tooth. Glad that it is working for you now though.

5

Yeah. Let’s just consider this one completely resolved. I just sent something to them as an FYI and a real person ack’d it. I figure they’ll put it on the back burner … no big … the skin version works for me.

Thanks for your response.