Real time protection

help!!

I had to turn off realtime protection on my avast, to run combofix. Now i cannot figure how to turn it back on again. I’m running Avast 4.8 home edition. when i click on the realtime button on the control panel, i get a popout with a graphic which shows the level of protection, but at the top of it, it says ‘DISABLED’ I cant find where to turn it back on. I’ve looked all over. I’ve right clicked on the realtime button and gone through all of the options [as far as i can tell] but still haven’t found how to do it. I’ve tried clicking on the popout box, left and right clicks.

Realtime doesn’t start working again after a reboot, either.

Surely there must be an ‘on’ button somewhere??

Can anyone help? This is leaving my machine open to attack!

:slight_smile: Hi :

When you RIGHT-click the “a” Icon, there is no “Start avast Antivirus” !?

Which “a” icon? Theres one on my desktop, which opens the control console. From there i can manually select to scan various parts of my pc.

I have been able to turn up the resident protection level, and it now says ‘standard’ instead of ‘disabled’ and windows now recognises that it is ‘switched on’. The thing that is cofusing me is that it used to have two @ icons on my taskbar. one for updates and one for the realtime protection. The realtime protection one used to spin, rather reassuringly, as the pc loaded, or as programs loaded. It is these icons which have disappeared [they don’t reappear on bootup, i don’t think] which made me think that the realtime protection wasn’t working.

The one in the system tray.

Right click and select"Start On-Access Protection," that should restart your resident protection. Now just left click the avast icon to display the On-access Protection window, if you see a Details… button click it, now select the Standard Shield provider and you should see it is started and set to Normal sensitivity.

The area you are/were working in is the Simple User Interface as Standard is an on-demand sensitivity setting.

The icon is no longer in my system tray.

Right clicking on the system tray, on the desktop, on the avast console, or on the avast icon on the desktop - NONE of these give me the option that you have described.

Still unable to restart it, then.

I have found the “show avast system tray icon” box - but that is already ticked, and I still don’t have the icons.

Have you ashDisp.exe in the process list shown in Task Manager? If not, can you launch ashDisp manually from Avast program directory (\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashDisp.exe)?

Make a repair for avast (Go Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs>Avast>Repair(If you cant find it than scroll down the mouse)

avast! icon missing - As a temporary measure until this is resolved you can create a desktop shortcut for this file C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashDisp.exe (the avast icon and interface to the providers). Right click on the file and select Send To, Desktop (create shortcut). You will need to run this after each boot until the problem is resolved.

What other security based software do you have that might block new startup entries, e.g. Spybot S&D (TeaTimer), AdAware (AdWatch), SpySweeper, Spyware Doctor (StartUpGuard or OnGuard), PrevX, WinPatrol, ProcessGuard, etc. ?

Or Make a link to ashdisp.exe in your startup folder.

Is there any other antivirus in your computer? Did you have in the past?

Thank you - I have successfully put the shortcut on the desktop, have run it and my icons are back on my system tray. Obviously, though, it is not running as the pc boots up, but only after everything else has finished loading.

I have had a problem, very recently, with a desktop hijack and a couple of trojans. I have used combofix to sort out the problem [under the guidance of an experienced combifix person] and had to turn off my spybot, the spybot teatimer, and the avast as they all have trouble running alongside combofix and would give ‘false positive’ results. The hijack and trojans have gone, but I was left with this problem with the Avast.

I notice that if I right click on the ashDisp shortcut, one of the options is to ‘pin to start menu’ - would this put it back on the start menu? I took a look at the start menu, via msconfig, as I’m prone to deselectiong stuff when the pc boots up too slowly. However, there is no entry in the start menu for the AshDisp, so I cannot re select it.

Thank you so much for your help - you are all stars!

Putting a shortcut on the desktop isn’t a solution but a work around, the solution is idintifylng the reason the icons aren’t there.

Turning off avast to run combofix shouldn’t get rid of the icons, they should be there especially when you restart avast.

It is more than likely what has been killed by Spybot’s teatimer, check its quarantine, etc and look for anything relating to ashdisp.exe and if found restore it.

The start menu was never where ashDisp.exe was it is a startup item.

You could Add the path to ashDisp.exe into a value named avast! in the Windows Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run see image, note the path in my entry is different as I have avast installed in a different location.

Would it be easier for me to uninstall avast then reintall it? I’m not confident with messing around in the registry.

I’ll take a look at the teatimer thing first - see it it’s there.

When i turned off the realtime protection, I did it by right clicking on the sytem tray icon and selecting ‘stop’ [I think] Is there any other option that I may have clicked on by mistake?

It’s the icon, not the protection that is available even before making login.

Start Menu, not the Startup entries.
Better is repairing avast installation.

Sorry - somehow I had missed your earlier post [see quote]. I have just tried this out, and it has worked. My icons are back, at boot up, and the realtime protection is working properly again.

Thanks to everyone who helped - you are all stars and I’d give you all a big hug if you were here right now.

Cheers.