Virus update fails - Not enough storage

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

A couple of days or so ago I downloaded and installed the Home version of Avast. I have Windows 98 SE accessing the internet through a dialup connection, using an old version of AOL, but I almost always use Internet Explorer to browse. Internet Explorer is version 6. I used to have an old version of McAfee, but that was uninstalled before Avast was installed. I have an ancient free version of ZoneAlarm. I have 18 or 19 gigabytes left on the drive.

I initially had a problem accessing the internet with Avast, but that was fixed after I set up a proxy. After that I was able to access the internet, but everything was moving very slowly. After accessing a few sites, I opened the Yahoo email with the activation number, and then used it to register the installation.

After being on the internet a few hours I got an error message saying that there was not enough storage, and I came to realize that the slowness was because Avast was trying to download updates the whole time. I tried to update manually after that, and sat there watching what was happening. Since I wasn’t doing anything else, the updates went faster this time, but abruptly ended about 86% of the way through, and the same error message came up. I tried it again with the same results. Any suggestions? I would hate to have to download another whole Avast install, because of the time involved.

The error message:

Information about current update:
Last encountered error: Not enough storage is available to process this command.

Total time: 43:30

The beginning and end of the log file:

09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: Started: 09.12.2008, 03:46:06
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: Running setup_av_pro-4cd (1229)
09.12.2008 03:46:06 system: Operating system: Windows98 ver 4.10, build 2222 [ A ]
09.12.2008 03:46:06 system: Memory: 100% load. Phys:3272/63852K free, Page:1839512/2033296K free, Virt:2073280/2093056K free
09.12.2008 03:46:06 system: Computer WinName: PAVILION
09.12.2008 03:46:06 system: Windows Net User: Stephen M
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: Cmdline: /downloadpkgs /noreboot /updatevps /silent /progress
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: DldSrc set to inet
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: Operation set to INST_OP_UPDATE_GET_PACKAGES
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: Old version: 4cd (1229)
09.12.2008 03:46:06 system: Using temp: C:\windows\TEMP_av_proI.tm~a59717 (18508M free)
09.12.2008 03:46:06 general: SGW32P::CheckIfInstalled set m_bAlreadyInstalled to 1
09.12.2008 03:46:06 internet: SYNCER: Agent=Syncer/4.80 (av_pro-1229;p)
09.12.2008 03:46:07 system: Computer DnsName: pavilion

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09.12.2008 04:21:20 package: PerformDiff: Ok
09.12.2008 04:21:37 internet: Used server: http://75.126.203.77/iavs4x
09.12.2008 04:21:37 file: GetFileWithRetry: vps-8112900-8112800.vpu downloaded and verified
09.12.2008 04:21:37 package: DldPackage: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vps-8112900-8112800.vpu, returned 0x00000000
09.12.2008 04:21:57 package: PerformDiff: Ok
09.12.2008 04:22:09 internet: Used server: http://75.126.203.77/iavs4x
09.12.2008 04:22:09 file: GetFileWithRetry: vps-8113000-8112900.vpu downloaded and verified
09.12.2008 04:22:09 package: DldPackage: C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vps-8113000-8112900.vpu, returned 0x00000000
09.12.2008 04:22:09 package: ERROR PerformPkgDiff: pPkgDiffStorage->m_pbtBufNew == NULL
09.12.2008 04:22:09 package: PerformDiff: vps-8113000-8112900.vpu Bad, error code 0x00000008
09.12.2008 04:22:12 general: Err:Not enough storage is available to process this command.

2

There seems to be a rash of this error (not enough storage, try a forum search) with win98 at the moment.

You could try a clean reinstall, but before doing that check out this McAfee removal tool.
McAfee has an uninstall tool that you could run to ensure any possible remnants are removed.
http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/VSCleanupTool.exe
2007 version - http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe
Also see - How do I uninstall SecurityCenter? http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=71525

Download the latest version (4.8.1296) of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html, don’t use the Cnet link) 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.

  1. Now uninstall (using add remove programs, if you can’t do that start from the next step), reboot.
  2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility, reboot. If step 1 failed it may be necessary to run this from safe mode, once complete reboot into normal mode.
  3. install the latest version, reboot.
3

This looks like the computer is completely out of ram. I’ll have the messages checked by colleague, but from “100%” memory load I believe I’m right.

4

kubecj

I am certainly not trying to argue with your assessment here but can I put a couple of thoughts in?

I believe I am close to correct in saying that just about all the reports of this (insufficient storage) problem have been Windows 98 users. I suspect that many of these users had no problem in the installation of the previous release of avast that they installed. I may be mistaken in this but I do not believe these are all first time installers of avast. I do not recall seeing this error reported (certainly not with this frequency) in previous avast updates. Is there a significant change in this avast update that may be provoking these reports? It occurs to me that the reported efforts to improve the avast VPS update process in the recent program update may be a contributing factor in this problem (not a criticism - great for those of us on systems where the problem is not encountered).

Of course, I am aware that recent events in another product have brought many Win98 users to avast and that does change the mix of users.

I reported in another thread that, on an old WinMe laptop, I successfully installed the latest update. On that machine avast reports a memory load of 78% on a 128Mb system in the successful install in the setup.log.

Would it be your opinion that affected users might try to close out inessential running processes to enable the avast update to succeed?

5

The (internal) size of the VPS file is now ~32MB, which may be some kind of threshold/limit on these old Win9x systems (max size of contiguous memory block? fragmentation chunk used by the heap manager?).

Plus, in order to successfully perform an incremental update, the updater actually needs to allocate two buffers of this size (source and destination).

I’m not saying this cannot be changed (e.g. to do the update “by parts”), but it’s just likely that it’s not related to the new program update, just to the size of the VPS file.

To confirm that, it would be helpful if someone with the problem could try to install one of the previous versions of avast, and see if the VPS update completes OK.

The older versions can be downloaded e.g. from filehippo: http://www.filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/

Try e.g version 4.8.1229.

Thanks
Vkl

6

I need to say that I have not been able to reproduce the error reported in this thread (yet).

However for whatever it is worth, I just restored an 11 year old laptop with an image from April 2007 of Windows Me which has avast build 981.

This machine has only 96Mb of memory.

I first inserted a new avast license key and then asked it to update the VPS. It brought the VPS up to date (it took a while but it did it).

I then updated to the current release (1296) which proceeded to a successful conclusion. avast reports a memory load during the update process variously as 86%, 92% and 100%. It still completed the update successfully.

Perhaps there is some difference between WinMe and Win98.

7

Thanks, everyone, for the replies.

It’s true that my computer does not have a lot of memory, just 64 megabytes.

However, the 100% memory usage statistic came near the beginning of the log file, after which it went through a very long series of downloading updates. The two times I did the update manually it got to about 86% done when the error occurred. There were also two attempts by the software to do it automatically. Presumably the automatic updates failed at around the same point, though I can’t say for sure. All the update attempts occurred one after the other, with no rebooting between them. I currently have it set to ask before updating, to prevent attempts that are sure to fail.

I don’t think the installation of the Avast software is the problem. It installed easily. The error happens when it tries to download the long series of updated virus definitions. I would guess it’s the number of updates that causes the problem, that too much time passed since the program version I downloaded was created.

In other words, it’s not the size of database, it’s the number of updates to it that have to be performed at once. Probably the error was not common with users earlier because less time had passed since that Avast installation file version creation, and thus fewer updates were needed. The reduced number of updates necessary allowed things to proceed with no problems.

It does look, though, like I will need to reinstall with the newer version, something I was hoping to avoid because of the time it takes on my slow connection.

Can a new installation still use the same activation key?

8

Yes, the new installation can use the existing key, assuming you saved the email with the registration, as the key you see in about avast isn’t the complete key.

9

Yes, I still have the email with the key. Thanks.

10

You’re welcome.

11

I am encountering the same problem with a Windows 98 machine running with 192MB of RAM. When updating it stops consistently at 87%. Freeing up memory by shutting down services and applications didn’t help.
Now I used the procedure described above by DavidR and it worked fine.
Thanks!

12

Glad that it worked for you, welcome to the forums.