My friend updated Avast to the newest version and is having start up problems.

She has the screen flash black before windows loads when she turns on her computer. She clicked on the green update pop up and nothing happen so she right clicked the avast balloon and updated it that way. This happened after she updated the version and restarted the computer. What could be causing this???

bump

Well if you think that this is a bad problem made from avast then:

1.Repair avast going Add or Remove Programs>>Avast>>Repair

2.If this doesn’t fix the problem then uninstall avast and reinstall.

Please, post the last 200-250 lines of avast log: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Setup.log

She just called me and told me its happening on both the computers that she updated on. Do you know what the black screen could be caused by??? We will try the repair option if that does not work we will reinstall it.

bump. My friend wants me to send her a screen shot of the repair screen. What will happen if I click repair to get a screen shot???

I will take a screen shot. Get this for her.

How would we get a screen shot???

I think the point is to give the screenshot to her to help her understand how to perform the repair.

Yes?

Sorry I misread it. I thought you wanted to get a picture of the black screen. Before she repairs it she wants to know what is causing it. We will get the log data soon.

Sorry to be picky but can we get a better description of this problem please?

I get several brief black screens on loading Windows XP (SP3) on both my XP systems and always have.

It would be good to know what precedes and what follows the black screen and how long it lasts.

Thanks.

After the black screen, the HP screen comes up and then the Windows XP screen comes up and then the black screens comes up again. The black screen lasts a few seconds.

Well, sorry Cheater but I don’t think that a few seconds of black screen after the first appearance of the XP splash screen is unusual, mine has done something similar for as long as I remember. I don’t recall the Avast program update making any difference to this - never really took much notice - but I think installing SP3 made a difference in the duration of that black screen, from maybe 3 seconds to about 5.
Maybe someone with better knowledge of how it all works will know, but I very much doubt it’s anything sinister.
(FWIW I know of a few good tools and procedures to help speed the loading of Windows, but I suspect you might, too.)

Is the black screen caused by the monitor?

Maybe the monitor is too old or damaged.

If Windows starts normally after that, I won’t worry about the small delay…
Maybe nothing is wrong, just a ‘speed’ issue.

Do you think any of the new stuff in the update can be causing this??? She updated it though right clicking the avast icon on the lower bottom right corner. She used to update it through the green update pop up. This all started happening after she updated them that way on both computers.

What is her OS ?

Try a clean reinstall on one of the systems and see if that resolves the issue.

Download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall. I’m assuming avast Home as you didn’t say what she uses.

Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD.

Now uninstall (using add remove programs), reboot, run the avast! Uninstall Utility, reboot, install the latest version, reboot.

Maybe… but I don’t think so… avast is updating and working smoothly in a lot of systems…
In XP/Vista, is there any useful information into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Events, specially ‘Errors’?