I hope you can help… I tried to install avast on a friends machine because i have it installed on my machine and am very happy with it. I installed it and the machine would not boot at all - not even in safe mode … after much convincing I told her it was probably a hardware issue and formatted her hard drive and reinstalled all software (very time consuming!!!)… then tried to reinstall avast again. Once again, the machine will not boot up since i installed avast. When i reboot, i simply get a black screen and eventually some options saying windows did not start successfully and asking me to boot in safe mode or last known good configuration - neither of these work I am running windows XP and there was no other AV software installed only avast. How can I get the machine to boot and sort out the issue?
We will need more information to be able to help you:
What avast! version are you trying to install?
Do you use a firewall in this computer? Which one?
Any other security programs that could interfere?
You can disable the ‘automatic restart’ and receive the blue screen with the error message and post it here.
Boot with F8 key pressed and disable the automatic restart.
It is strange, seems some hardware failure and not ‘only’ avast…
It seems as if the machine does EVENTUALLY boot up - i left it for over an hour and it eventually booted up. I do not get the standard windows icon when i boot the machine though, simply a black screen for ages and then a white progress bar with nothing else on the screen for hours… until it eventually boots up. This seriously long boot up only started happening once i installed avast. I am running the free home edition one. I cannot think of any other security software which is installed (unless xp installs it automatically as I reformatted the machine and installed xp professional with sp 2 - i am assuming windows firewall is also running if that is set to on by default as i did not disable it)
Any ideas why it is taking hours to boot with no windows logo’s or anything ?
The avast! installer should have asked you (at the end of the installation process) if you want to schedule a boot-time scan. Did you choose yes or no? Does the problem occurs even on subsequent boots? (I know it’s kinda hard to wait for a few hours each time)
I am running windows XP and there was no other AV software installed only avast. How can I get the machine to boot and sort out the issue?