Ok, so I got the notification inviting me to try pirate english. I clicked the link in the popup from the notifaction area, which apparently launches the updater program, which in turn requests admin privileges with a UAC popup. At this stage I’m even more curious/suspicious so I took some time to google for some more info. A couple of minutes pass and the UAC prompt times out. Now I see an error “Failed to load language dll” and the Avast icon in the notification area is not responding. I reboot and am greeted on login with the same error, and Windows notifies me that I have no active AV protection.
So cute idea guys, but (1) you got me a bit worried with this pirate stuff - I didn’t expect such a fine sense of humor from my security software and (2) I’m now trying to repair my Avast installation because I timed out making a decision on it.
By the way, I would file this as a bug report but I’m not sure where. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
To solve the problem Start the Avast UI by using the icon on the desktop or in the start menu (the tray icon is useless for this at this stage) then go in settings, at language section, mess around a bit with the Language field and select English again, EVEN IF it already appears as selected in the drop-down list.
Close the settings window by pressing the OK button. (NOT by the X in the corner!)
Be warned that even the UI is largely useless until you fix it, the side buttons for Scan, Real Time shields and Maintenance show either a message about “unspecified error” or cause the entire avast UI to freeze and require re-starting the interface.
Same problem here, made a reply about it in the other thread about pirate english… virus protection disabled by a joke, great priorities the devs have.
Edit: I tried the fix, but it only applies if Avast it still running. I restarted my computer and Avast will not start at all, so I can not fix this unless I reinstall. Ill do the first half of a reinstall…
Thanks for responding, Vlk. And while I didn’t like inconvenience so much, the idea behind this exercise is fine with me. Actually, it’s unconventional little things like this that make Avast a more “personal” company, and for that reason I’m more likely to stay with it.
There’ll be a new VPS update shortly, fixing this bug.
If you’re one of those who were affected, I’m afraid you’ll have to uninstall avast as there’s no easier way to fix the problem on your side.
Again, sorry to anyone who was affected by this.
Thank you
Vlk
[i]PS. for advanced users only, there’s one more way to fix the issue: boot into Safe mode, and edit the file C:\programdata\alwil software\avast5\avast5.ini, section [Languages] so that the line Engine= says
I switched to pirate and back again with no issues whatsoever. I did not however get any notification that it was available and did not update in that way. I just saw in the forums that it was available, looked for it in my language options, chose it and it downloaded and installed without issues.
I got the popup for pirate talk and decided to click no on it. Now I’m having the same issues as everyone else, Avast won’t even start up anymore.
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AvastUI
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Failed to load language dll [1909\UILangRes.dll]
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OK
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I like how a small language update destroyed the entire application, must be easy for people that actually spend time writing viruses to destroy/disable Avast also.