Phoning Home at Startup

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I found one topic in my search of phoning home. But that has to do with updates. I have no problem about that.

My question is why does AV have to phone home before it will work? When I start it up it has zero days registration and will not work until it makes that connection with home base. What is the purpose of that process?

Just asking so I understand what is going on. I cannot get AV to work. Twice today I have had to manually start the Avast service. That should never happen. I could not get Avast to work so I tried repair. It would not work so I opted for the full update. It still will not work. I have seen Avast startup and start the update right away and the Avast protection will not start until the update is completed. That is scary as I never know what else is coming in with it.

I have has numerous problems trying to get Avast to start. I wish I knew what the problems were. I am running XP SP3. I stay with Avast because I like it. But I am starting to think I better find a package that will work more consistently so I am protected in the crazy Internet world.

Is there a way to debug what is causing the problems?

Thanks for any help. I know there are literally thousands of configuration of PCs and it is hard to make all work under those circumstances. But I would like mine to work. I need protection from the evil forces of the Internet.

Thanks.

Mike

2

When you reinstalled was it a full clean install using aswclear ? Or was it just removed via control panel ?

3

I tried the repair using add or remove programs. When that failed, I clicked for it do a full update. I did not do a uninstall at all unless the process did it.

What does aswclear do that the Avast process does not do?

4

I don’t know what you mean by phoning home ?
But avast connects for A) streaming updates, B) regular virus definition updates and the C) Emergency Update Check.

The fact that avast.setup happens to be running doesn’t mean that the main avast service (avastSvc.exe) isn’t running, it starts very early in the boot time.

If you mean you don’t see the avast tray icon, that isn’t the avast protection, it is just the avastUI (user Interface) in which you can interface with the main program.

When you boot as soon as you can open task manager and see what avast processes are running, if you are quick you may see the Emergency Updater, avastSvc.exe, avast.setup (which is responsible for the updates) and the avastUI.exe. What can you see ?

If you have 0 days on your registration you wouldn’t be allowed to get any updates, so that is something that needs sorted first.