I can’t install Avast on a win98 system I have downstairs because after a few days of avast running I go to start the system back up and it says registry error and prompts me to restore the registry from a backup. When it starts up avast is no longer operational. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled 5 times and each time I get the same result. I put Antivir on there for now, but would prefer Avast. I searched the forums as good as I could and didn’t find any related info. Any help would be appreciated.
What exactly was the registry error? This might help to pinpoint the problem.
Was there another AV on this machine previously? If so what one and was it removed completely.
Is there any other information about the error? Error message or number?
Did you invoke a system restore or not, just booting and the system asked itself for a registry restoration? :
it says registry error and prompts me to restore the registry from a backupMostly this is an indication of a damaged Windows. Could be caused by bad sectors on the harddrive. I suggest a repair of Windows (after checking the drive thouroughly). If that fails, do a clean install.
This only happens after avast install. No there was no av on there previously. If I uninstall avast all is fine. A few days after avast install on bootup you get the corrupt registry error and it asks to restore to a backup. I’m sure this is definitely related to avast as it is the only thing that trigger the error. Antivir does not cause this problem. I will try a reinstall of the OS and see if that takes care of the problem. This is not win98 2nd edition. Maybe I will put a diff OS on the machine.
What you say/tell us, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a Windows problem.
Just some suggestions/ideas:
1] check the hd with the drive util from the mnufacturer
2] if the drives turns out to be fine, do a clean install of Win98 and right after it install Avast (nothing else) and see if the same problem appears. If not, it wasn’t Avast but Windows.
3] I suggest not to do a reinstall, but a clean install. Reinstall/repair is not overwriting all windows files and there is a change a corrupted file will remain there.
4] If you want to try another OS (and I take it this is an older system since there is still 98 on it). FreeBsd, Knoppix (yes can be installed on a drive as well as run from cd), or Mandrake (Since some other well known distro’s of linux have some problems with older video cards which can be solved but is hard for a newbie to do)
I’m not a newbie actually. I’m A+ certified (For whatever that’s worth today…heh).
I have a few questions… Does avast use ODBC for VRDB? This corruption seems to happen after VRDB completes.
I ask this because I have found a problem with ODBC on this system and think this may be the cause of the issue. I will try some things tonight and let you guys know what happens.
Thanks for the input guys… you’ve been a big help getting me to think on it in a different way. After checking out the system more thoroughly and thinking on it I found the ODBC problem.
Do you have the latest mdac and jet drivers installed?
It’s as up to date as a win 98 OS can be. 
Most probably VRDB uses ODBC driver…
If you change the storage method to XML, does it help?
You may try to open the \data\avast4.ini file and in the [Common] section, change the item Database=ODBC to Database=XML. This could prevent the Microsoft Jet drivers from accessing the database…
That’s something I was going to try, but haven’t had the time to get to it.
Tic tac tic tac tic tac
We’re waiting ;D
Happy New Year 8)