Starting Resident Protection

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

We are trying to get avast up and running on my girlfriend’s computer, and no matter what we do, we can’t get Resident Protection to turn on. This is on a Win98 box with 512MB RAM. Avast version is V4.7, downloaded two days ago. Outside of NAV 2005 (below), no other other anti-adware/antivirus/etc product has been installed on this system.

We previously had installed NAV 2005. It bogged down her system so much we removed it in order to go to Avast. We did the following first:

  • Disabled NAV 2005
  • Installed Avast

Obviously, this didn’t work and brought me to these forums. Further searching of these forums led us to the Avast Uninstall Tool as well as the Symantec Removal tool, so we downloadeded those and then did the following:

  • Uninstalled Avast via add/remove programs
  • Rebooted
  • Ran Avast Uninstall Tool
  • Rebooted
  • Uninstalled NAV 2005
  • Rebooted
  • Ran Symantec Removal Tool
  • Rebooted
  • Hand-edited the registry to remove any reference to Symantec
  • Rebooted
  • Installed Avast

Like many others, we are getting the “no” option on the “A” icon in the system tray and can’t get it to “turn on.” So we uninstalled Avast again and tried again.

  • Uninstalled Avast via add/remove programs
  • Rebooted
  • Ran Avast Uninstall Tool
  • Rebooted
  • Installed Avast again

We’re still at the same point we were previously. Clicking the “A” icon once, and nothing happens. Right clicking and selecting “Start On-Access Protection” doesn’t do anything.

Looking at the task list, we have two running processes in regards to avast: “ashmaisv” and “ashwebsv”. “ashserv” is not running.

On the “On-Access Scanner” screen, we do see all the different tasks that we can try to start: Selecting each of them individually (Outlook/Exchange Version 4.7-871, Standard Shield Version 4.7-871, Web Shield 4.7.871, etc) and trying to “Start” them results in a message box that pops up the “Persist the Changes?” box. We select yes, and then get a reddish box that says “The requested resident task was not found.”

We’re stuck, and I can’t find anything else in these forums that is helping. If anyone can provide guidance, we’d be most appreciative.

Edit: Girlfriend corrected me on few points, including changing NAV version to 2005.

2

Hi Cymbaline,

You don’t have a firewall, do you? Sometimes you need to allow avast! the permissions it needs from a firewall.

You could try running MSConfig* and disabling all the startup items and rebooting.

(Start>run>msconfig>ok>startup)

If avast! works then, re-enable statyup items one by one till you find what is preventing avast! from running.

Failing that, try uninstalling avast! and a registry cleanup with TuneUp Utilities which has a free trial:

http://www.tune-up.com/

EDIT * Not sure if you have this feature in Win98, but you may have something similar?

3

Hi FF,

I’m the girlfriend. I never got to try your suggestion above. However, there was a new version of Avast available for download last night. Once I downloaded, installed & rebooted, lo and behold, the program was live and the red null sign was gone. So I think everything is now working alright on my desktop PC. I wonder if there was a bug in the last release or something that was causing me the original problem?

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for replying with help.

AG