No issues updating to 1803 here, Avast not even disabled before the update. But still on 18.3.2333, not sure if it is a 18.4.2338 issue. Won’t be updating till it is sorted…
My computer did the Windows update early this morning, and it made a total mess of things. It got close to completion after several restarts and then started asking me to choose a language for the keyboard. Every time I selected one, it restarted and asked again. As others have reported, my options were very limited. I couldn’t use system restore, or repair, but could boot up from an older version, but I got a black desktop with just a recycle bin in the corner, and trying to open explorer resulted in something about a token error.
I discovered the website link somebody posted earlier, suggesting it was Avast that was causing the conflict. I downloaded the removal software on a USB, deleted Avast using the task manager, and then downloaded the 1803 update (about 4.4gig) from a neighbour’s computer, because my terrible internet connection was telling me it would take 6 days! I extracted the contents of the ISO onto a USB stick, ran the setup.exe via task manager again, and am very thankful to have my computer back up and running this evening.
I’ve been using Avast almost since its inception, but sadly after this I won’t be returning. It’s been a very disruptive and stressful day.
DANGER!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!!
I tried to fix this problem myself by reinstalling Windows 10 and asking it to keep my applications and files. It DELETED ALL MY PERSONAL FILES. I know that for many others this solution did work but it really depends how screwed up the update was. In my case it seems that it never backed up my user files to windows.old as it is supposed to do and then it restored empty directories instead of my desktop, documents, videos, pictures, etc.
Microsoft support says they will have a solution in a couple days and will then help me restore my files. I doubt they will be able to as even EASEUS can’t find them. But in any case, I recommend others to wait a couple days if they can to see if they can get a proper fix.
The same thing happened to one of my computers today
I have wasted a whole day trying to get the computer restarted- I resorted to wiping the disk and starting with a clean install - now Avast won’t instal because avchrome.dll is missing
Very very annoyed
Hi everyone,
In cooperation with Microsoft we have identified an element of the latest Windows 10 1803 update that is incompatible with the Avast Behavior Shield, causing the aforementioned update to fail in some instances (related to a timing issue, Internet connectivity issue, etc). Luckily, we have found a way to prevent the problem and are now automatically pushing a VPS update to all customers which makes sure that the problem doesn’t happen. The VPS number is 180524-08; all users running this version (or later) should be 100% safe.
For those who’ve been already affected by the issue, here are step-by-step instructions to bring your computer back to life.
If done properly, no files or data will be lost and no apps will disappear (= computer will be back to normal).
Things you will need:
- 8GB or larger blank USB stick
- a functioning Windows PC to use briefly (another computer in your home, a friend’s computer, even one at a library or print shop)
- about an hour of time
Steps:
- Turn on the problem computer.
- At the blue screen, choose your keyboard layout’s language. (e.g. “US”)
- Choose “Use another operating system”.
- Choose the second option, “Windows 10 on volume X” (X stands for a number)
- Wait for the computer to boot to the desktop (if necessary, enter your password to login). You may have to wait a long time for the desktop to appear, while the “update” gets ready.
- Once the desktop attempts to load, close any error messages that appear.
- On a functioning Windows PC, go to www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10.
- In the “Create Windows 10 installation media” section, click “Download tool now”.
- Run the tool you downloaded, and follow the simple steps to create a Windows 10 installation USB stick. This will erase any existing contents of your USB drive. The only option you should check is to make sure it is a 64-bit or 32-bit version. Your computer is MOST LIKELY 64-bit if it’s reasonably new.
- On the problem computer, right-click any blank area on the taskbar, then click “Task Manager”.
- Click “More details” so that you can see the menu bar.
- Click “File”.
- Click “Run new task”.
- In the dialog box that appears, check the box “Create this task with administrative privileges”/
- Click “Browse…”
- Navigate to your USB drive and select “setup.exe”.
- Run the file and follow the steps to “upgrade” Windows. Uncheck the boxes for “check for new updates” and to “help make this version better”. If you are asked what you want to keep, make sure you tell it to keep everything!
- Let the process run, which may take some time. Once completed, the computer should be back to normal, and fully up-to-date. You may need to re-login to your Microsoft Account.
(instructions provided by The Computer Cellar, many thanks for that!)
In the meantime, we continue to investigate the this issue which appears to affect only a small subset of our customers.
BTW at this stage, we know it’s not an Avast-specific issue as the problem affects other software as well. The instructions above should work in all cases.
Many thanks,
Vlk
Hi Vik
Some additional info which i hope will be useful…
Following on from corrupted win10 1803 update, pc reset and ending up with a working win10 ver 1803 that had removel all my installed software including ms office pro 2010. I tried many times to reinstall, using different media but each time office got to 65%, whizzed to 100% briefly, rolled back to 50% and then gave “microsoft office pro 2010 encountered an error during setup” and a close button. I ran various fixes to no avail.
Believing it was a win10 1803 corruption problem I gave up and completely rebuilt my PC with win10 1709 dvd i had made in march 2018. The rebuild went well and surprising tho it may seem the Feature Update to Win10 ver 1803 via windows update worked perfectly. However, on then trying to install ms office pro 2010 on this new build it failed at the same point and with the same error as the original build!! I tried multiple times with various copies of the media.
So as this rebuild sort of proved this error had not been caused by the corrupt 1803 build I then temporarily disabled all Avast (free) anti-virus shields and re-tried the MS Office install and it completed without error! I have never had to disable shields in the past but maybe this new version of Avast (ver18.4.2338 build 18.43895.0) is the problem.
To further confirm it is an Avast problem when windows update found an additional cumulative 1803 update and a number of office updates these to failed to install… Again i did ‘Retry’ a couple of times resulting in the same Failed to install’ error.
Switched off Avast shields and re-tried windows updates and they All Installed.
Conclusion:- Avast Free ver18.4.2338 build 18.43895.0 will Not allow any fresh update/install to Office Pro 2010 on a Win 10 1803 build.
If more folks had only followed these instructions. https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=156141.msg1459636#msg1459636
Hi Bob3160,
I too wished i had first looked at page 115 of the thread you suggested prior to starting the Restart after my pc had downloaded the update. Unfortunately i didnt as i have never had a problem previously with any of the large updates - hey ho ;D
A question though please… Why after a fresh rebuild and with Avast active would a clean install of Office not work? I could install Adobe, MWBytes, Realplayer etc etc etc but not Office whilst Avast shields were active. Plus later on would not install the office specific win updates again without shields disabled?? I have never had to disable shields to allow an Office install previously. What has changed with Avast?
Any thoughts would be appreciated
since windows 10 version 1703, microsoft have recommend the following step when user receive major updated https://www.groovypost.com/howto/prepare-computer-windows-10-creators-update-version-1703/
A question that needs to be addressed to Avast. not to an Avast user.
A few comments on your advice about how to recover a corrupted computer.
Firstly, the Media Creation Tool wasn’t able to work correctly on a FAT32 USB flash drive of 16GB, as described previously. I had to use Rufus to install an ISO onto the same USB drive formatted as NTFS.
Secondly, on the problem computer, right-click (or left-click) wasn’t working on the Desktop. I don’t remember whether I tried it on the Taskbar, but it certainly didn’t work on the Windows icon. It changed the appearance of the Windows icon, but did nothing.
I had to force the problem computer to boot from the USB drive, and there wasn’t an option to upgrade an existing Windows. Recovering didn’t work, and I had to do a clean install and lost the pre-installed MS Office and all other programs.
A suggestion - why doesn’t Avast use the notification popup to warn people that there is a problem with the Update? The popup could include a link to the relevant post on the forum. Most Avast users won’t even know the forum exists, until it is too late.
It is actually possible to resolve the entire thing without another computer or even without using a USB stick. Or at least, it was for me - I did briefly need my phone, but that was due to an additional problem which not everyone may encounter.
What I did (after many hours of searching online for solutions) is as follows:
- Login to your account on the corrupted computer (as per Vlk’s steps 1-5), but you don’t need to click away the error messages (just Alt-Tab them)
- Hit Ctrl Alt Del, then open Task Manager
- Go to Users tab, right click your account, select Manage User Accounts (If you don’t see any accounts listed, try signing out and in again)
- This will open a Control Panel window, where you click the arrow pointing up until you get to an Explorer window, from where you should be able to open a web browser, access your downloads folder, etc.
- Then download the update as per steps 7-9, but select the ISO version, download and save directly onto your computer.
- Mount the ISO (right clicking on the downloaded .iso file should give you a ‘Mount’ option), then run setup.exe
I had the additional problem that the Media Creation tool wouldn’t work on my computer, blocking me from downloading the update. I finally found an article ( https://www.askvg.com/tip-get-direct-download-links-of-windows-10-iso-from-microsoft/ ) explaining that there is actually a way to bypass the tool entirely and directly download the ISO update, but you can only access the direct download link if you open it from an OS that isn’t Windows 10. Any phone with internet access should do the job, and will allow you to email yourself the direct download link, which you can then use from your affected Windows 10 computer to start downloading the file. Once it’s on the computer, mount it and run setup.exe .
Hi Avast! I had been messaging MS ever since my Windows 10 system completely crashed with the described symptoms. No adequate response from them.
I am not sure who exactly is to blame, considering the oblivious difference in scales between MS and you, I would rather chose MS. Especially since I read on MS forums and on reddit that many affected users never has anything to do with any of your products?!?!
Their developers were acting… not sure if IRRESPONSIBLE is enough in its meaning. It is a sad, very sad story.
The notorious Windows 10 1803 update - that I have been trying to avaiod - but didnt really realize how deadly it would be, finally pushed to my system at about 22h 0n 24th may. After hours of rage - I finally managed to load a previously stored image backup from a WD external device and to restore the system to a February 2018. I didnt know where exactly to search the web for possible solutions, just tested almost all the available options after the Choose your keyboard screen. Didnt have another PC to assist the steps from MS and reddit, only my android phone at hand…
I have been using avast almost ever since its birth back in time, on all my devices. Since I can not get rid of MS - because of obvious reasons, I just parted with avast.
This horrible situation never happened to me before.
Now that I read here, on reddit and on MS- that days before me - the problem had been already reported - by hundreds, located, MS pretending they would stop the update from pushing into further Avast installed PCs days before 24th, you here saying before my personal disaster - had been pushing avast fix update - again before my disaster - sounds - how to call it? … lame? Nothing of all that reached me. And My pc was restarted same morning of 24th of may - nothing, it stayed on - all day long on 24th of may with stable internet connection!!!
I updated my two computers to 1803 on the Microsoft release day while running Avast Internet Security. Both computers were updated through Windows Update, it took about 20 minutes for both computers, and I haven’t had any problems with them.
I didn’t disable Avast, or any of the shields, or make any special preparations for the update to 1803. I have also updated the two quality updates Microsoft has released since the update to 1803, one being KB4100347: Intel microcode updates on 18/05/2018, and KB4100403 (OS Build 17134.81) released on May 23rd again without any problems or preparation to do the updates other than making sure my file/folder backups, and disk image backups were all up to date.
BTW I also run Malware bytes alongside Avast, and use Windows Defender’s manual scan option once a week as a ‘second opinion’ scan of my computers.
This is just to let you know that not all Avast users are having these problems…
I think it would help if Microsoft Update required users to make a conscious decision whether to make a backup (or not) before starting any major update like this.
This would give users an opportunity to research whether there are any known problems, and if necessary disable some software to prevent possible conflicts.
The current system of starting an upgrade just on the basis that the user isn’t busy, means that their backups won’t be as up to date as possible.
It would also be useful to know if upgrades can take place without an internet connection, if malware protection has to be disabled.
I have suffered a catastrophic failure as a result of this issue, the blue screen of death. I am very disappointed with Avast as I am a paying customer and have had no support whatsoever, no acknowledgement of the problem, no apology whatsoever.
I called out an IT technician after 4 days of downtime, and following the Avast Support approved blog, he reinstalled Windows 10 from a flash drive, undertaking an installation recommended by Avast to retain existing applications. This procedure did retain all applications except Microsoft Office 365, which I eventually reinstalled. However it has wiped all data, photos music etc. Nothing to be found in windows.old and so far having analysed all files on the laptop, no sign of missing data.
I will be cancelling my subscription to Avast.
I am a personal user but for those of you who are Avast business users my heart goes out to you, if you have lost all your data.
User data never gets wiped unless you say so. If your “technician” deleted it, have a beef with him, not avast! (regardless of what caused the problem).
I downloaded the Windows 1803 update on Wed May 23 and ended up with the blue screen. I have seen the fix devised by Avast and Microsoft and I thought it looked ok but then at the password screen there was no facility to put in my pin number only a password which I don’t have. When I pressed “I forgot my password” I got “Windows cannot connect to the ProfSvc service. Please consult your system administer”, which I don’t have. Pressing OK put me back to the blue screen that I started with! Will there be an updated fix to allow a pin number to be used?
People only have themselves to blame if they don’t do a weekly backup and blame Microsoft and avast when they have bsod and lost all all data,as everybody knows you should have at least 2 backups on hard-drives.
after all its free in widows 10 and works great…
Both my laptops have had problems,first had constant bsod and had to restore,then tried again a month later and went through fine.
second laptop crashed and had to restore and downloaded the ISO file to flash drive,disconnected from the network and disabled avast and that went through fine as well.
I know you shouldn’t have these problems from Avast or MS…
But always create a system image before upgrading and do one every week.
This has saved 2 laptops from major problems.