Hi, I installed the free version of Avast 4.8 maybe 2 months ago and generally am happy with it. But for several days now, I don’t see the avast icon and the VRDB icon in the tray. I’m worried it stopped its background/web protection. On startup it doesn’t load either. However, I can launch the virus scanner just fine except that when it detects a trojan or virus, it cant move it to the chest for some reason. It says Error in aswChestc: chestAddfile Error 1753 or aswChestInterface - Program error description: CChestListview:… and so on. What could be the problem? I have Windows Xp sp3 on my pc.
P.S.
Also when i launch the av scanner, the resident scanner always says disabled even when I reset it to high.
I had Avira before but I uninstalled that one and replaced that with Avast which worked great for several months. Its just this past week that it started having problems. By the way, I uninstalled Avast using the Avast Uninstaller in Safe Mode and re-installed it. Did pre-boot virus scan (which didnt show any) but still have the same problem. I checked the Services in the Administrative Tools and it shows that all Avast services (Antivirus, Control Service, Web Scanner and Mail Scanner) are stopped. When I try to start them manually, it wouldn’t. It would say Error 1503: the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion or Error 1608: the dependency service or group failed to start.
Save all these to the desktop or a convenient folder.
-Disconnect from the internet, as you won’t have AV protection.
-Go to the Avast program settings>troubleshooting, and disable the self protection.
-Stop on access protection.
-Uninstall Avast from “add/remove programs”
-Run the Avast uninstall utility. Be advised that all your program settings, and anything in the quarantine will be deleted.
-Run the Avira registry cleaner.
-Reboot.
-Install the fresh copy of Avast. (You might wish to skip the boot scan as part of the “first run”.)
-Reconnect to the net. Get Avast updates.
Ok, I did all what you said. Still no result. I tried installing Avira instead. And its the same problem. Its installed but for some reason the background service just doesnt seem to work or start. You think it might be a deep seated viral infection? I might decide to do a Windows reinstallation if no solution comes up. Thanks for all the help nevertheless.
It could indeed be something malign stopping your AV from running. I have read about a Bagle variant that can do this.
Your options include (in the order I’d try myself)
Running various antimalware scanners to find and delete it;
Posting a HijackThis log to a forum that is specialist in remote analysis and cleaning 9this forum has members who can analyzes the logs)
Format and reinstall.
Good antimalware scanners (free demand versions available) include MBAM and SAS.
It’s possible you may need to rename the main executable on installation to get it to run. If this is the case, it’s almost certain you have something a bit nasty.
Once installed, update, run it (or them, but not together) and please post the scan report/s.