restart required without any reason

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

My avast! Version 4.7 Home Edition keeps asking me for a restart of my Windows Me after each avast! update process irrespective of whether there was a new virus definition or not.

During the subsequent boot process the OS informs me that the configuration files (term translated from German) are being updated even if there is nothing to be updated because avast! had not downloaded anything before.

I tried to uninstall avast! and reinstalled it again - without success.

Could anybody figure out a reason for this strange behaviour and propose a solution?

2

I suggest an installation of the version 4.8 from the scratch:

  1. Uninstall avast from Control Panel first.
  2. Boot.
  3. Download the latest version of Avast Uninstall and use it for complete uninstallation.
  4. Boot.
  5. Install again the last avast! version.
  6. Boot.
  7. Check and post the results.
3

I followed your instructions closely and got the attached error messages when trying to install version 4.8 according to step 5.

4

a friend of mine has the same problem, I hope you can find a solution for this issue.

5

Please, post the last 200-250 lines of avast log: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Setup.log

6

Sorry, Tech. You instructed me to completely uninstall avast and that
is what I did – unfortunately without prior saving the log file.

So, now I can only send you the logfile established during the new
installation process that ended with the two error messages attached
to my previous post. I hope it will help you to guide me and perhaps
NourinE’s friend to successfullly installing the new version of
avast. The attached file is my setup.log modified by adding line numbers and re-named.

7

I’m on Linux now and for some strange reason Firefox is giving me a XML error while trying to download or open the files you’ve appended. I’ll see them later, on Windows.

8

The error message means that avast previously requested restart by creating file reboot.txt in C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup folder. Now the installation won’t continue until this file is deleted.
Try to delete this file manually (or delete whole avast4 folder), then run setup again.

Also if file wininit.ini exists in C:\Windows folder, please send it to me. If there is any other file with name wininit, except the one with exe etension, send it too.

9

Deleting “reboot.txt” in accordance with your advice was not
sufficient. The subsequent installation of avast 4.8 produced again
the two error messages attached before. I had to delete the entire
avast4 folder before I succeeded in successsfully re-installing
avast.

The problem has not completely gone. Sometimes I am still asked for a
restart of my WinME and somtimes the system reports during boot-up
that the configuration files are being updated even if there had not
been downloaded any new vps defintions. Therefore I am attaching the
last 250 lines of the setup.log file as requested by Tech in Reply
#4. Furthermore, I am attaching the requested wininit.ini (wininit.bak
is identical) in the C:\Windows folder as well as a pertinent WinPatrol popup.

Unfortunately re-installation of avast led to my sygate firewall
being disabled i.e. it vanished from the system tray although it is
still listed in the WinPatrol StartupPrograms as “SmcService” under
HKLM_RUNSERVICES. Starting Smc.exe and selecting the option “Load
Sygate Personal Firewall on Windows startup” did not change this
behaviour. After restart it was again missing in the system tray.

I suspect Sygate Personal Firewall to be part of my avast problem –
not only because of the above described irregularity but also because
the avast problem does not exist in any of my other WinME and WinXP
partitions where I do not have this firewall in place.