Out of Date Avast prevented login to windows, created temporary account.

system · 2017-02-10T21:17:50.000Z

This was such a frustrating issue, and I wanted to post what happened so if someone else comes across this they may get a solution.

So I hadn’t had my PC turned on for a while, was moving. Got it setup a day or so ago. Avast had not updated to the current version yet, didn’t even know one was out (no internet).

Went to run a scan but could only select Boot Time, so went ahead and proceeded with that. It completed and I logged back into windows just fine. Didn’t use the system long and shut down the PC that evening.

Went to fire it up last night to do some game reinstalling, logged in to my profile (the only one, administrator) and immediately the colors changed and the default Windows 8.1 desktop background popped up, with a message balloon that I had been logged into a temporary profile due to windows not being able to access user data, and that nothing i did would be saved.

You can believe I was pretty stressed, I had never seen this behavior before! went online looking for fixes, found tons of “Do this to the registry” and “Clean Windows Install” and “Rebuild User Account” which all seemed a bit too much for a Thursday night after work.

I thought at that point, maybe I had a virus that was triggered with the boot time scan. So I decided to fire up Avast. The Icon would appear in the start bar, but the GUI would only flash on the screen for a second and then go away. “Great, this is gonna be bad”, I thought to myself.

Not really knowing what to do next, I right clicked the Avast System tray icon, went to Update, and updated the program. This actually worked, and it asked me to reboot. When I did, my user account was back to normal, desktop was what it should be, and no evidence anything was missing. Because I was still wary of my Avast installation, i used the steps for a clean Avast Install using the Avast Uninstall/Clear tool which can be found here on the forums.

I now have the ability to do scans other than Boot Time, the program appears to be functioning properly (scanned overnight, nothing found), and Windows is not misbehaving.

Hope this helps anyone experiencing the same issue! Good Luck Out There!

-Jermz

Eddy · 2017-02-10T21:20:52.000Z

logged in to my profile (the only one, administrator)

That is not the administrator accoun, but a user account with administrator rights. The real administrator account is hidden by default.

system · 2017-02-10T21:26:00.000Z

Eddy post:2:

logged in to my profile (the only one, administrator)
That is not the administrator accoun, but a user account with administrator rights. The real administrator account is hidden by default.

Thank you for the clarification but I do not think that detail changes much.

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