Re-installing after a crash

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Following damage to my system disk after a power cut, I lost the ‘Alwil Software’ program directory. When I try to re-install avast! Home Edition the installation program finishes with an error, and I suspect that this is because there are still registry entries etc. from the previous installation.

What do I need to do in order to clean up the registry and/or delete dll files so that the install program will work OK.

Thanks in advance!

James

2

Download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.

Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD.

Now uninstall (try using the add remove programs to uninstall first), reboot, run the uninstall utility, reboot install the latest version, reboot.

3

If exe files disappears from Alwil Software folder, you can have an infection, probably a rootkit on your system that is killing avast.

See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=26554.0
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=25941.0

I suggest you scan with AVG or Trend Micro RootkitBuster.

After running the above rootkit tools if nothing is found try these.
If you haven’t already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it, preferably in safe mode.
AVG anti-spyware or SUPERantispyware or Spyware Terminator.

4

I figured out what the problem was. The disk repair utility had put the contents of the ‘Alwil Software’ directory into a file … which it celled ‘Alwil Software’. So presumably the installation utility gave up when it found a file with this name instead of a directory. I set another directory as the install directory and everything worked fine.

Thanks to those who tried to help!

James

5

James, this error could occur with chkdsk (scandisk) but it will be good if you be sure your disk does not contain any other errors, running a full chkdsk /R scanning/repair.

6

Thanks for the advice ‘Tech’. I’ll run chkdsk on the partition as you suggest, since there could be further damage to the file sysem after the power outage.

James

7

Did you run it? What were the results?