Office Problems Since Installing Avast

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

hey there,

since installing Avast Home 4, every time I reboot or do anything at all really, I lose my Office. I try to open files in Word/Excel, whereever and get a message either “(File name) is not available” or “(File name) cannot be read.” This is either from attachments in e-mail or on the local drive. If I uninstall and reinstall Word, this is resolved and everything is fine, but of course I don’t want to be doing that several times a day… I am guessing it has something to do with exceptions I need to put into Avast or maybe it’s seeing something as Spyware and deleting it??? Any ideas PLEASE? I’d really like to keep Avast, but can’t keep going like this with word.

Thanks so much!!!

ETA: I have Office XP. Thanks.

2

Which was your ‘old’ antivirus, the one you’ve used before avast?
Do you scan your computer with avast and other antispyware tools?

3

i uninstalled norton 2007, installed avast and ran scans after setting up the known exceptions i needed to add in order for my work software to work. then the Office problems started and i uninstalled and reinstalled Office and it worked fine, but now every time i restart, i have to uninstall and reinstall word. I have since uninstalled Avast and i am not having the Office trouble anymore at all.

4

Norton in the past has shown this sort of thing with Office, NAV gets so deeply embedded into the system that these sorts of things happen where there might be a hook on .doc files associated with NAV. I think that is why Tech asked about a previous AV.

A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT

This removal tool also works for NAV 2007 to ensure all remnants of NAV are removed.

5

I second David’s advices…

  1. Remove NAV through Add/Remove programs from Control Panel. Boot.
  2. Use Symantec removal tool following the three steps defined in the SymNRT tool info or here.
  3. Boot.
  4. Install avast! Boot.
  5. See what you get.

Full SymNRT info:

  1. Download and save these three files to the Windows desktop:
    a) ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/MSIFIX.bat
    b) ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/SymNRT.exe
    c) ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/SYMMSICLEANUP.reg

  2. Run the three files that you just downloaded
    a) On the Windows desktop, double-click the MSIFIX icon.
    Click Run.
    A black window may appear very briefly.
    b) On the Windows desktop, double-click the SymNRT icon.
    Click Run.
    Click Next.
    Click I accept the License Agreement, and click Next.
    Type the letters and numbers that you see in the white box, and then click Next.
    Click Yes or OK at each prompt.
    You may need to click more than once. Your computer may be restarted for you more than once.
    You may be asked to repeat some steps after the computer restarts.
    c) On the Windows desktop, double-click the SYMMSICLEANUP icon.
    Click Run, and then click Yes.
    Click OK.

  3. Boot.