First, thank you to all the nice people on this forum. Youse do a good job, and please keep it up.
Now, Alwil. I have just wasted over an hour removing 4.8, rebooting into Safe Mode, using the v4 removal tool, rebooting, scrape the registry clean – 4 hives – and then install 5.0.418.
And guess what!!! MSVCR90.dll is missing!!! Now I have to scrape out all traces of v5. I am not happy.
Where is the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) that Avast!5 needs?
Sorry Igor, they’re not.
I’ve said it before, but I don’t (this time) mind saying it again. If an app needs certain bits to make it go, then the publisher needs to make customers aware of the fact. Good, reputable publishers may include the redistributable in the download, or they may point the client to a download facility. The best publishers host copies on their own websites. Good, reputable publishers do NOT leave this task to volunteers on the support forums.
Now I am sick and tired of trying to make the wonderful v5 go on this machine. I really am not going to waste any more time on downloading something which is larger and doesn’t even work. In my book, despite the best efforts of the volunteers on this forum, Alwil is now just another third-rate wannabe. I’ll go for something which works, even if the detection rate is less than 100%.
Oh yeah. Trying to update a website AND develop a new version needs TWO teams, not one. The info I get from the Avast! site is, well, what info?
Firstly, have you looked around the forum , do you see that anyone has had this problem ?? I don’t so has it occured to you that there was a disfonction in your particular installation ??
Secondly, are you aware of the fact that many programs do indeed install third-party applications like this in order to work ? No because most software do not let you know that so drop your "Good, reputable publishers " speech as in fact it is irrelevant to the issue as it should be included in the installer like igor said and the real issue and question is why it isn’t in the installer.
Last but not least, I’m assuming that you have advanced Team/ Software developpement skills since you’re telling Alwil how to do they’re job ? But then again, given the tone which you are using as well as your arguements aren’t that well though out (then it is just an opinion).
So if you would please help alwil to understand the cause f this issue…It would prevent it from ever happening again.
I’m afraid I have to repeat myself - but the corresponding redistributable is included in the installer, and is run during the installation. (If it weren’t, we’d see thousands of users having this problem - which we don’t.)
So, it seems that the redistributable fails to installs on your machine for some reason…
@igor – OK, I’ll scrape out 4.8 again, and reinstall .418 again. This time I’ll look for the install log. However, it won’t be soon, as I normally work 10- or 11-hour days: the weekend looks good… 8) I should say that there were no error messages until I rebooted, so W2K did not object to the distributable as such. Having said that, in previous attempts to install and run v5 I was unable to find any trace of the MS*90.dll pack – I have several other versions, *80, *70, etc in \WINNT\system32, but no *90.
@igor - Ummm… Silly question time. In most exe’s, if I view them in EditPad I can find a section with a list of dll’s. Looking through earlier v5’s, I cannot find any mention of the Visual C++ expressed as MSVCR90.dll. Should I be able to see it?
@al968 - my mother always said “If you cannot say anything helpful or nice, say nothing.” I’m not into flame wars, so nothing is what I’m saying now.
@Gopher John - Thank you for the links. As I said in my initial rant, while the many thoughtful members of this forum are more than willing to help this way, they should not have to. This really is something that Alwill has to do, and I’m going to give it one more go and work with igor to see if the .418 download is trying to install it.
I’m confirming the existence of the problem with this DLL missing. Key point is target system Win2000. I installed Avast 5.0.418 on VM with Win2000SP4. Installation was gone fine, but AvastUI.exe can not started due to this DLL is missed (it is really missed in system32).
And the reason the this DLL missing is clear now.
Yes. avast! installator calls vcredist_x86.exe for installing missing DLL from VisualStudio2008SP1. But this redist installer can not run on Win2000SP4 system due to missing the required entry HeapSetInformation in the corresponding KERNEL32.DLL. So redist is NOT installed without any information for user.
So workaround is manual copy this DLL from some XP+ system to Win2000 system.
So it is not Alwil but Microsoft fault.
The only redistributive file which can be spread is vcredist_x86.exe from MS site. System requirements from download page are
* Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
* Minimum: 6 MB (x86)
* Required Software: Windows Installer 3.0 Windows Installer 3.1 or later is recommended.
But internally this exe is selfextracting archive consisting of:
a) install.exe. install.ini, globdata.ini, vcredist.bmp, a lot of eula text files, a lot of resource DLL for this install.exe
b) vc_red.msi, vc_red.cab
Microsoft fault is the install.exe was written WITHOUT W2K compatibility because it uses for example the function HeapSetInformation which according MSDN requires Windows Vista or Windows XP.
So this install.exe can not run on W2K giving error message.
But the only useful part of this package is 2 files from b) (VC_RED.MSI and VC_RED.CAB). These files can be copied manually from temporary directory when error message dialog box is shown.
With these 2 files copied we can launch vc_rew.msi manually and got VS2008SP1 runtime installed both in SYSTEM32 folder and WinSxS store.
Probably it is worth to inform MS about this fault.
I agree with psw. It’s actually not Alwil’s fault. OTOH, someone didn’t test thoroughly on W2K systems, or made an assumption, and the minimum requirements for v5 do clearly include W2K – not even requiring SP4!!!
I’m afraid I really must insist on a suitable minor update… You may want to liase with pk. He has my ntoskernel.dll file which is missing the required HeapSetInformation thingy.
I agree it’s pretty stupid… requiring SP4 just to start the installer (or rather, having a static dependency… i.e. not showing a reasonable error message).
I didn’t notice in this particular thread (in your original posts) that we’re talking about Win2000.
Yes, it should be fixed somehow… though I’m not sure how; maube the “best” way would be to show an error in avast! installer that SP4 is required (and make sure the same is clearly stated on the web).
I’m not sure it’s just a matter of requiring SP4 – although anyone without SP4 needs his/her/its head read ;D – because I have SP4 and rollup 1.
If I understand psw correctly, any version aimed at W2K would have to bypass ntoskernel.dll and simply drop vc_red.msi and vc_red.cab into whatever temp folder then run vc_rew.msi.
Alternatively, the Avast! website could host the required MSVCR90 files and drop them into WINNT\system32\ which would have the same result. I do not believe there is any need to register them, as several other apps have used essentially the same method, although that was on W9x…
As for hosting msvcr90.dll… I am not sure if it’s (legally) allowed, maybe it has to be distributed in the form of the full redistributable. (I may be wrong, just speculating.)
The \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\aswMon2.sys device driver could not locate the entry point IoGetLowerDeviceObject in driver ntoskrnl.exe
psw asked me to send him my ntoskrnl.exe, which I did.
Feb 14, I install .418 – this thread. Once again, no Visual C++.
A number of people besides myself have confirmed the VC++ problem: hake, edmuser, psw:
I have W2K SP4 and rollup 1. kernel32.dll version is 5.0.2195.6688, ntoskrnl.exe version is 5.0.2195.6717.
According to psw, Microsoft stuffed up by not including W2K in the invocation of the HeapSetInformation enry point in ntoskrnl.exe.
It also appears from psw’s info that for me a lot of jigging about like a chook at a christening is needed to:
But the only useful part of this package is 2 files from b) (VC_RED.MSI and VC_RED.CAB). These files can be copied manually from temporary directory when error message dialog box is shown.
With these 2 files copied we can launch vc_rew.msi manually and got VS2008SP1 runtime installed both in SYSTEM32 folder and WinSxS store.
and I'm not interested.
I’ve said this time and again: this is not something we users should have to “work around”. I like the thought that Alwil talks to Microsoft and lets them know of their problem. OTOH, I won’t hold my breath waiting for their reply, I don’t look good in purple.
avast! installer will check if kernel32.dll is new enough (i.e. if it contains this problematic API function), and if not, it shows an error and won’t continue.
For you, I’d suggest to reinstall rollup1 (if possible) - the one I downloaded 2 days ago contains kernel32.dll v5.00.2195.7006.
(And, 5.0.2195.6688 is the version of plain SP4, so I actually don’t think you have rollup1 installed - or at least it didn’t update your kernel32.dll)
