On-Access Protection not working after upgrade to 4.8

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have a two user license for Avast Pro. One PC is running XP SP2 and the other 2K SP4. I allowed the 4.8 update to download and install on both two days ago. It seems to work fine on the XP PC, but I have spent several hours over the last two days trying to get it to work on my 2K machine. After install and reboot the On-Access protection would not start - “The AAVM service detected an RPC error”. I have searched this forum for solutions before posting this so I have already tried several solutions and none of them has worked. I ran the repair, I then uninstalled and reinstalled, I uninstalled and reinstalled 4.7 which had been working fine (I’ve used avast on this PC for three years with no problems) but now it also had the very same problem. I then uninstalled, rebooted, ran the new uninstall utility, rebooted, checked that there were no registry entries or files left behind in the places mentioned in other posts here, and then installed a fresh copy with no luck. I then went through that whole routine again but installed 4.7 but still no go.

Some other details: I checked the install log after the last install and saw no failures or errors listed. There are no event log errors or avast log errors. The “avast! Antivirus” service nor any other avast services will start because of a dependency issue. I have noticed on the XP PC it lists both RPC and “avast Standard Shield Support” as services it is dependent on, but on the 2K PC it only lists RPC. In the install log it listed that it successfully set “avast! Antivirus” as dependent of both in the registry. I also tried most of the settings under “Troubleshooting” including delay loading avast services, disabling the rootkit scan and the self defense module.

I would really like to continue to use avast since I have a year left on my license and it has served me well. I do PC service work and have installed it on many PC’s with hardly ever a problem, but it seems from other posts that I’m not the only one having problems with 4.8.

Any help with my problem will be most appreciated.

2

Got same problem here. Very frustrating!

I have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times and still the on-access scanner fails to start. I had a look into the registry and have found what looks like a corrupted Avast key in HKLM/currentcontrolset/services/aswMon2.

Despite being administrator, I can’t access it (see the attached image.) but I can access the keys around it (ASWRdr for example). This is very annoying and I really would appreciate some help getting it sorted.

Thanks in advance…

JB

3

I suggest an installation from the scratch:

  1. Uninstall avast from Control Panel first.
  2. Boot.
  3. Download the latest version of Avast Uninstall and use it for complete uninstallation.
  4. Boot.
  5. Install again the latest avast! version.
  6. Boot.
  7. Check and post the results.
4

Sorry for taking so long to get back. I tied the list of tasks but the freshly installed copy refused to run any of the live protection modules and in addition, the un-openable registry key is still there and still un-openable. :-[

5

Interesting indeed. Can the aswMon2 key be accessed from Windows Safe Mode?