Since last week, we have been getting customers, running Avast Free or Avast Internet Security, unable to login to Windows 10 properly. The issue they have, is their Windows Profile is seen to be corrupt and so they are logged in with a temporary profile. When we have been to visit the affected customers, resetting the registry back to use the real profile and rebooting, on logging in they get their original profile back but Avast says it has been installed. Every instance of the problem has given the same Avast message. If you open Task Manager as soon as the desktop appears, there is a process running “Avast Emergency Update”
I experienced this same problem earlier today, but in Windows 7.
I booted up my computer this morning and logged into my general personal use profile. I had stepped away to start making some coffee at that moment, so didn’t get to see what was happening. I came back to find an Avast window taking up my screen, telling me that Avast had updated and needed a restart to take effect. Instead of doing all of that I clicked “restart later” and closed the window. That was when I noticed that the desktop appeared to as if it were a default desktop for a newly created profile.
Thinking I had accidentally logged into the wrong profile I logged out and logged back in again. That was when I noticed the message about the temporary profile. Baffled, and mostly in desperation, I restarted my computer. As it in the process of rebooting it occurred to me that whatever was happening might be related to the Avast update. Upon reboot, I was able to log in to my profile without any issue.
While the problem is easily fixed, it’s still extremely troubling. I can’t help but wonder if Avast has purposely caused this problem to force. First of all, I didn’t initiate an update, and my update preferences are generally supposed to require that I choose if/when to update the program. That leads me to suspect that this was somehow a forced update that overrode the user settings, and basically was designed to lock users out of their devices before continuing further, kind of like how Microsoft force updated some people to Win10 against their will. Second, if not an intentional design, then this kind of bug raises severe concerns that Avast updates might accidentally inflict irreversible damage to users’ files. Which would really defeat the purpose of having an anti-virus program in the first place.
What I know is that if I encounter this kind of behavior again with Avast, it will be the last time.
Well avast can and will override the user preferences when it comes to update if they believe it is needed.
e.g. for a emergency security fix.
It is clearly stated in the EULA/Terms.
Hi PureITy and externalsolipsist,
thank you for reporting. We are monitoring the situation, you are the only two people reporting this so far. It is true that we have released a new version of Avast last week (version 17.3.2291, build # 17.3.3443) which should arrive via standard program update channel depending on your settings.
To elaborate on Avast Emergency update behavior - it is scheduled to run after every boot and then repeatedly every 12 hours, so you correctly saw it running in Task Manager right after logging in to system. It is used to provide critical security fixes to protect users from zero-day vulnerabilities. It also reports problems in Avast client (such as application crashes) to our backends.
I’d like to ask you to send us a Support package generated on the affected systems (even if the issue has been resolved) which would greatly help us in determining whether or not it was caused by Avast (and if so, how). You can find the instructions and download the tool here. The file is automaticly uploaded to our FTP, just don’t forget to post the File ID here so that we can find it.
Hello everyone,
we have successfully identified the issue and we are currently working on a fix. The issue happens during regular program update to latest public release (version 17.3.2291, build # 17.3.3443) and is not in any way related to Emergency update mechanism
Also it should be noted it doesn’t cause anything else but inability to log in to standard profile after the first reboot after program update. The program is still updated successfully and consecutive reboots resolve the issue.