A friend of mine reports that, after installing the latest
version of Avast! Free and restarting his computer, Windows
XP now demands a password at startup - where it didn’t
before. Meanwhile, he has no idea what the password could
be.
If we don’t find a way around this, he’s going to have to
reinstal windows and lose all his data. Does anyone know if
Restoring XP would solve the problem?
Without having checked the info he’s given me, it seems to
me advisable, after installing the latest version of Avast!
and before closing down or restarting, to check that no
change has taken place in Windows startup settings - user
accounts, auto login, use of passwords …
Avast! hasn’t done this to me but another program did
something similar under 2k - which required altering the
registry to restore things.
Unless someone has a bright idea, I plan to boot his
computer with a Bart’s PE cd and carry out the Privilege
Escalation Exploit - involving logon.scr and cmd.exe
As for Avast making the computer “demand a password”, that’s BS.
He may be accusing avast because that’s the last thing that he remembers doing on his computer, but none of the installs that I’ve ever done has made this happen.
Thanks for the suggestion. It’s better than the one I mentioned
which requires knowing the pw.
It’s not necessarily Avast causing this, it’s more likely Windows.
A quick search shows similar happenings are not all that rare.
I am having the same problem. And I have seen this problem mentioned a few times through out the forum. Yesterday my dad paid for avast and after the computer the “log on to windows” screen pops up. Now I would assume this would be doing this because of avast. Because that was the last thing done on his computer. And he has windows xp just ad the other person. So my question is what is the password? And if I don’t have access to another computer to make a password cracking disc how else can I log in? My dad had never had a password on here at any time, so that is why this is pretty confusing.
Schedule a boot time scanning with avast with archive scanning turned on. If avast does not detect it, you can try DrWeb CureIT! instead.
Use MBAM (or SUPERantispyware or even Spyware Terminator) to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, it is better and safer to send the infected file(s) to quarantine (Chest), rather than simply deleting them.
Yes i’m realy installing windows, with a original cd and key, just did it again on a home edition, seconds after installing avast it started to alert about viruses and it does not stop until i disable it and unniistall avast.
already try on 3 computer and always the same problem, going to try a other antivirus to see what will hapend.
This is exactly what I am saying. I can’t get pass the login. So avast clearly set up a password, that I don’t know. I’m not about to reinstall xp back on my computer. I to many files that I haven’t backed up. Plus that doesnt seem to be a fix