Some time ago there was an issue about permissions (trying to control escalating privileges issue), not being able to access the avast folders, files, but that problem was resolved with program update some time ago.
What is the version of avast home you are using, 4.7.982 is the latest/current version ?
I have no problem opening it with notepad or any other text editor that I have, wordpad, editpad lite, etc. There are also no ASCII characters in it only plain text links to the servers. See image, I have obscured the urls but they are plain text also.
Mine is version 4.7.892. I couldn’t use any text editor to open the servers.def file
And I tried opening other files too in that folder, without success. Even the summary.txt, setup.txt and setup.ini returned access is denied errors. ROFL!
I’m about to reinstall avast! Hope that fixes the problem.
It is certainly the next logical step having tried others, good luck.
Are you installing avast in a different folder to the default ?
That also used to cause issues if there were any non standard characters in the path to the avast4 folder, could this also be correct with your path ?
Yeah, in a different folder to the default, but no non-standard characters. But thats all irrelevant now, 'cause I can’t even uninstall now (haha). I get another error (ARGH!) that says “A setiface error has occured:2. Try to reinstall or contact support, please” when I hit uninstall.
Well it certainly sounds like your set-up is royally screwed, sorry about the technical terms.
Try Windows, Run and type:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe “C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\setiface.dll”,RunSetup
What do you get?
Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD so you can find it later. Run that it should be able to clean up after a failed uninstall, reboot and install avast again.