Windows taskbar and taskbar search not working with Avast

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Good Morning.

I bought a new laptop, everything was running smoothly. On the second day all of a sudden the taskbar was not responding anymore:
• the start menu does not open up
• the search field neither
• the calender and noticification areas as well and
• I am unable to open pictures with the “Foto”-app, received the error code 2147249195 once - with Paint I am able to.
anything else “pinned” to the taskbar works.

I scoured the internet for solution and tried:
• via powershell
• repair tool
• restarting the explorer
• and others
I found on the internet, but nothing worked.

I finally stumbled over links in this forum and figured out that obviously many avast users have /had this issue, so i unistalled it and everything was working fine.
Full of hope I followed the instructions I found here in the forum, to clean install the premium version again.
I did, entered the code, restarted, and all the problems were back.
This time I tried to repair avast and was told it is when finished, but it wasn’t.
So I started a second time from the beginning, uninstalled and restarted and it worked, reinstalled and back to zero…
So uninstalling Avast was the only moment when all problems were gone.

On my old laptop I did not have these issues.
My current laptop runs:

1. Windows 10 Pro, version 20H2
2. Avast premium security 21.6.2474 (Build 21.6.6446.683)
Let me know if you need further information

I do not get any error messages, clicking on the window symbol to open the start menu it is “shrugging” for a split second but nothing happens.
If i click into the search box, the same, without the shrugging, nothing happens as if the search box wasn`t even there.

The calender and notfication areas showed up again and are, so far, running smoothly with or without Avast being installed.

So what am I doing wrong and how can I fix it?
I want to keep Avast as I am a long term customer with other licences as well and was really happy with it untill yesterday.
many thanks in advance!

Sven

2

I use Avast Free and although I have yet to update to avast free 21.6.xxxx I’m not experiencing this issue. So I don’t know if there are any components in Avast Premium Security that could possibly have any interaction. Even so I would expect an error message or alert window if it were an interaction with avast.

Also if this were a common problem in avast 21.6.xxxx I would expect to see more topics relating to it.

I don’t know if you have checked the search string that I gave in reply to you’re other post. There are several near the top of the listing that look promising. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=taskbar+is+not+responding+anymore

Most new computers come with an Antivirus program pre-installed or just the Windows Defender.
Did you remove any other AV or Disable Windows Defender (note, when you install a 3rd party AV, defender should be disabled by the OS) ?

3

If everything worked fine on the first day but not on the second,
What changes did you make?

4

Good morning,
I think i figured it out by now.
HP Wolf security was preinstalled on the notebook and this obviously is not compatible with Avast.
I have to enable one of these and it is working again.
Didn’t even know that HP Wolf exists.
I am in contact with HP right now, but probably have to deinstall one of those.

Or do you have any ideas how to make these run together? I think Wolf securities has its advantages as well.

many thanks for your help!
Sven

5

HP Wolf is endpoint security - https://www.hp.com/us-en/security/endpoint-security-solutions.html
No two AV’s work together. You need to choose one and get rid of the other.