Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: drummerman on October 21, 2013, 09:54:30 AM
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This is an intermittent occurance; The AVAST icon doesn't always load.
The program seems to work in the background (according to system explorer) but I can't access its functions, not even through the AVAST desktop icon. Windows 7/64.
Other than that, this version loads much faster than the previous one. I can access IE almost immediately when loading windows whereas before it took a good two minutes.
I am almost reluctant to remove/re-install as I don't want to risk these long loading times retuning again.
I like the interface and have no problems otherwise at the moment. Thanks
regards
PS. this was a clean install having removed the older version first.
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Did you tried to restart Windows? Check if Avast is present in msconfig --> Startup
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Yes, like I said, its an intermittent problem. Sometimes it loads (the icon), sometimes it doesn't. Re-starting can solve the issue, sometimes a couple of re-starts are necessary.
regards
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In such cases is hard to determine what is causing the problem, I think the best choice is to completely reinstall Avast.
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Try a repair first.
Control panel > software > avast > add/remove > choose repair
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Thanks. Done that to no avail.
Looks like a re-install is inevitable.
regards
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@drummerman,
I await your results with interest, per my problem here http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=136785.new;topicseen#new (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=136785.new;topicseen#new).
Do you plan to reinstall over the top of the existing software, or go for a clean install?
Regards,
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I also have a similar or identical issue.
Have Vista32bit SP2.
After update to V. 2014 the avast-ball didn't rotate anymore...
After restart of OS there was no ball at all, I also couldn't access the Avast GUI...
Clicking on the link to avastui.exe the was no reaktion.
Maybe it worked in the background, but without ball and without possibility to acces Avast...
So I did a system-recovery to the condition before updating avast to 9.0.2006.
Now it works thanks to god, but with version 8.0.1500...
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Right. My animated icon has reappeared in the System Tray.
Firstly, I did an Avast "repair install" via Win Control Panel.
Then I had a look at the Settings - Troubleshooting and compared them with my operational iconised laptop.
Starting from the top (Enable Rootkit) as Item 1), and ending with "Enable Hardware-assisted virtualisation" as 8, my settings are now:-
1. On (i.e. checked)
2. On
3. Off
4. On
5. Off
6. On
7. On
8. On
Previously, I had 5) "Load Avast services after.." etc. checked because of a previous problem (now sorted via .ini file). Item 6) "Do not use Chrome..."etc. was previously unchecked, so I have checked it.
I can see that delayed starting Avast services might not help, but not Chrome. As it's working, I don't propose to experiment further to see if I can narrow anything down; at least not for the moment.
I really don't like it when things fail or work and I don't know why!
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I suspect it is a conflict with other things (drivers, services, applications) that are starting at boot-time.
Perhaps StartUp Delayer (http://www.r2.com.au/page/products/show/startup-delayer/) can help with the trouble shooting.
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Most likely, as always.
I've repeated a clean install and after one boot-up all is well as far as I can tell at the moment. Repeated booting will tell whether it made a difference.
I'll update in a few days.
regards
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I haven't updated from 8 and the avast icon is missing too. No access to ui except from control panel - I'm trying a repair but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. How long should it take?
Probably unrelated but the avast IE8 add on(s) was also preventing IE8 from opening. Had to disable to get it to open and am awaiting a response to a ticket for that.
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I've had this problem three times in the last few days after restarts: no avast! taskbar icon, although Task Manager shows avastui.exe running; the avast! entry in the taskbar customize having no icon either; double-clicking the avast! shortcut having no effect; no notifications from avast! (although after eventually recovering the avast! taskbar icon after a restart the next day, its log showed it had carried out a scheduled quick scan while 'invisible'); no way to access avast! or see what it's doing.
The first two times, avast! reappeared after a single restart. The one today, two restarts did nothing, but it reappeared after a repair and yet another restart. Unfortunately the apparently random nature of the problem means I have no idea whether the repair actually made any difference. I've now changed the Settings - Troubleshooting settings to those given by Foxfan100 above.
I'm completely inexperienced with Avast! - I only changed over to it a couple of weeks ago after many, many years using AVG. I must say I'm finding this problem very disconcerting, and would very much like to know that someone knows what's going on and what a definitive solution is.
(Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit)
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Maybe I can help with this. I had this problem last week. It was intermittent also.
After a few restarts with no taskbar icon, I used a few cleaning tools like ccleaner and glary utilities and a few others. In Ccleaner, i've checked the Taskbar Icons and cleaned the registry also. And for last I used Auslogics Disk Defrag Free, and choosed to Defrag and Optimize. After that, I rebooted the pc.
Now the icon appears since then. Don't know what program made it appear, problaby Ccleaner and Auslogics Disk Defrag.
Give it a try. And sorry about my English ;D
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In my case, the repair got "stuck" and I couldn't escape the avast ui or even shut down the pc, so ended up having to hit the power button. On restart, I was able to run the repair. Still no task bar icon (but it did take care of the IE8 problem which worked again after enabling the avast addon ).
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Maybe I can help with this. I had this problem last week. It was intermittent also.
After a few restarts with no taskbar icon, I used a few cleaning tools like ccleaner and glary utilities and a few others. In Ccleaner, i've checked the Taskbar Icons and cleaned the registry also. And for last I used Auslogics Disk Defrag Free, and choosed to Defrag and Optimize. After that, I rebooted the pc.
Now the icon appears since then. Don't know what program made it appear, problaby Ccleaner and Auslogics Disk Defrag.
Give it a try. And sorry about my English ;D
No. I use Ccleaner and it makes no difference.
Re-installed (clean) Avast and after the 2nd re-boot the icon is hidden again.
This is clearly a bug. Even though Avast is (probably) running ok in the background it is kinda difficult to rely on the program with such faults occurring.
I like the new version (as and when it works properly) but this is resulting in a lack of confidence about the protection of this AV.
I hope they can sort this with an update, quickly.
Thanks
regards
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You can also try to do a clean reinstall.
To do that you have to download the uninstall tool. The avast 9 version one. Reboot, run it in Safe Mode, reboot and install avast again.
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Sorry, didn't see your last post.
Ok, try to Defrag and Optimize. I'm not having issues anymore with the icon. It has problably to do with system startup, and by defragging, you can make your computer a little faster.
So, when I was having this issue, I used this programs, in this order just to clean the junk out of my pc, and voilá:
Ccleaner - be sure to select "tray notifications cache" under advanced. Note that all your tray icons will disappear. They start to reappear after a short time, or after you open a program that had a tray icon (if you have glary utilities or wisecare for exemple, the icons reappaer in the tray after you use them for the first time)
Glary Utilities - Default options
Ashampoo Winoptimizer Free - Default options
Tweaknow Regcleaner - Default options
WiseCare 365 - Default options
Auslogics Disk Defrag - Defrag and Optimize and click on Turn Off Pc after Deframention.
This worked for me. Avast icon appears 3 or 4 seconds after desktop is loaded.
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tried all that, after having tried reverting to a previous version (proper uninstall and whatnot)... worked for one boot, and then back to not working.
so I'm still stuck with the UI process, the service process, and the self defense stuff running but having no access to the AV itself.
since I've used other tools and all came up clean I'm thinking it's about time to give up and try another product, because even if I have been using avast for years and years now, "loyalty" is not a concept that holds sway in security software. if something isn't working... :/
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This issue has gone quiet on the forum. Has everyone (apart from me) solved the problem? :D
Still have this intermittent fault of the taskbar icon not loading and no access to the GUI, perhaps the programme not even working properly otherwise.
Have to say that AVAST has become a handful in the last couple of years.
For the inexperienced who just want a reliable AV I wouldn't recommend this programme anymore.
Most folks don't even know what a boot in safe mode is (!) and all this removing remnants with dedicated cleaning tools then re-installing etc etc is one huge faff around. Not good at all.
I appreciate that the guys at AVAST need to stay competitive and come up with ever more 'clever' features but personally I think it has gone to far.
Having said that, when it works (!) the new version seems less resource intensive and faster.
Back to basics?
regards
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for me, the UI-inaccessibility just stopped happening... but instead my IME is not working properly now. this time I have a restore point, but I'm probably going to have to have someone more knowledgeable come up with something to fix all the problems avast has been causing. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and drop avast. updating your antivirus shouldn't cause a mountain of problems, much less problems that change into other ones when trying to fix the initial ones. (the documents thing in my start menu is also now not doing it's job, even without letting that ashampoo thing mess with it. getting VERY annoyed)
honestly, if this is going quiet on the forums it's probably people getting angry and giving up.
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Hi Zetgeist,
Instead of going through all this brain damage, go back to v.8. You can get it here:
http://www.oldapps.com/avast_antivirus.php
Scroll down to v.8.0.1489
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Or try this resolution:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=138170.msg1009653#msg1009653 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=138170.msg1009653#msg1009653)
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Or try this resolution:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=138170.msg1009653#msg1009653 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=138170.msg1009653#msg1009653)
I'd be surprised if that will solve the issue.
regards
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I'd be surprised if that will solve the issue.
regards
Well, 5 reboots...Avast icon is there in the taskbar on every reboot.
However, I still say it's a bug. However, I like the increase speed of my ancient PC with this version of Avast. Also, the manual update of the virus definitions files is a lot faster, than it use to be with the earlier versions of Avast.
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This also happened to me upon avast updating from v8 to v9. I am unable to access avast's UI to configure it due to this.
The OS is Windows 7, 64-bit. This didn't happen in v8. Windows 7's Action Center detects that avast is fine and running. Also, avast's DeepScreen feature has worked on a software I tried. I've rebooted the computer more than 5 times already, but the issue persists.
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This also happened to me upon avast updating from v8 to v9. I am unable to access avast's UI to configure it due to this.
The OS is Windows 7, 64-bit. This didn't happen in v8. Windows 7's Action Center detects that avast is fine and running. Also, avast's DeepScreen feature has worked on a software I tried. I've rebooted the computer more than 5 times already, but the issue persists.
Did you leave 10 or 15 minutes in between each reboot to let windows repopulate itself, rebooting one after the other straight away wont work sorry.
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This also happened to me upon avast updating from v8 to v9. I am unable to access avast's UI to configure it due to this.
The OS is Windows 7, 64-bit. This didn't happen in v8. Windows 7's Action Center detects that avast is fine and running. Also, avast's DeepScreen feature has worked on a software I tried. I've rebooted the computer more than 5 times already, but the issue persists.
Did you leave 10 or 15 minutes in between each reboot to let windows repopulate itself, rebooting one after the other straight away wont work sorry.
The reboots are hours apart. (I've been having this issue for days, since avast updated to v.9.) I also tried a 'Repair' through avast's uninstaller, to no avail.
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I thought this problem had resolved on my system.
It hasn't!
After a couple of days where the icon appeared in the Tray as it should, it then stopped doing so.
The only way I can get it to show up is as I described in my first post on this. That is, to log off my default Admin account, log on to my "Super Admin" account, log off that and then back on the normal account.
This, needless to say, is the proverbial PITA; especially as I have a paid full version of Internet Security.
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Ok, after a few days, I've run into to this problem again 3 times. And I managed to resolve it again. But I've noticed something peculiar.
It took the first 2 times to notice something. Everytime, at least in my system, that the icon disappears after reboot, I can't open Avast from desktop. If i try to open it in safe mode, it takes ages and the status is Unknow and this doesn't fix anything.
So, how I fix it. I've installed a little cleanup tool named Bleachbit. It has some hidden options in the edit -> preferences -> don't show irrelevant... something. I'm translating from portuguese, because the program doesn't let me choose any other language (if it's installed in a pc with a different language, it'll install in english, french, etc etc etc).
After that, basically I've selected all options to clean .temp files from all programs on the list. Only .temp files.
I've noticed then that a 30mb .temp file was created by avast. I've deleted this file and rebooted. The Icon showed again and avast was up and runnin'.
The 3rd time it happened I repeated this process. The temp file was only created after a reboot in safe mode and trying to open avast from there. It took about 4 minutes for avast to load into "Unknown Status" and then I rebooted, cleaned the temp file and rebooted again.
This is starting to get annoying. Hope it'll be fixed soon.
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I have exactly the same problem. After a boot the taskbar icon is sometimes there and sometimes not. I have installed avast three times but no change. I have done three restarts at 15 minute intervals but no change.
The desktop icon when double clicked does nothing.
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add me to the club.This is getting really annoying.I'm losing faith in this build.
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I have the same problem, i don´t know how many times i have install and uninstall with avastclear utility in safe mode and the problem persists, sometimes appears the icon (few times) and the most times the icon don´t appears. Somebody can help us?
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In order to not fall into the trap of only posting here when problems occur, may I say that at present, after the latest update 9.0.2007, things seem to run ok.
I hope it will stay this way :)
Thanks AVAST.
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In order to not fall into the trap of only posting here when problems occur, may I say that at present, after the latest update 9.0.2007, things seem to run ok.
Did you have to uninstall/reinstall with the latest version installer? My taskbar / system tray icon has been MIA ever since since avast auto-updated to v.9. I am still unable to access avast's UI to configure it due to this.
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In order to not fall into the trap of only posting here when problems occur, may I say that at present, after the latest update 9.0.2007, things seem to run ok.
I hope it will stay this way :)
Thanks AVAST.
Ditto.
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In order to not fall into the trap of only posting here when problems occur, may I say that at present, after the latest update 9.0.2007, things seem to run ok.
Did you have to uninstall/reinstall with the latest version installer? My taskbar / system tray icon has been MIA ever since since avast auto-updated to v.9. I am still unable to access avast's UI to configure it due to this.
I did re-install clean with the previous version, prior to the latest update.
I've installed the current version through the GUI.
regards
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The missing taskbar / system tray icon bug seems to have been fixed. I have experienced this bug ever since avast auto updated to v9 from v8. What I did was download and then install (I didn't uninstall anything) the latest avast installer (http://www.filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/) (currently v.9.0.2007). Two restarts later - and the system tray icon is still here.
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Thanks to the last "upgrade" (on a paid for not free account) this laptop is now as slow as the old XP I replaced for being too slow.
Avast version: 2014.9.0.2006
Win 7 64 bit now takes 3-4 minutes to boot (are we still in 1980 or is this 2013 and we still tolerate long boot times?)
Prior to the last "update" a 45 second boot sequence was normal.
The booting sequence after entering my password now instead of the screen showing my desktop image remains black for over a minute then the desktop Icons appear but then in a few seconds they all turn white and slowly populate back one by one by one...
I have read on other sites where Windows Essentials are all anyone needs and is much faster.
Avast has and I stress has been great but I am seriously considering just deleting it even though it is paid for.
Computers are supposed to work for us and not the other way around. When I write a program I make sure it works for the customer and they don't have to jump through hoops, uninstalling, clicking their heals 3 times then re-installing.
I have already placed in manual every service which is not absolutely needed at boot.
I have stopped Win 7 "updates" as the last one destroyed every file association for thousands of MS Office Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint documents so I no longer trust ANY automatic update.
I should not have allowed AVAST to update this machine and make it worse than Win 98.
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I've been having a similar problem on Win 7 64-bit Ultimate, with the system hanging and the desktop icons failing to populate. I had to crash the system with the power button and go through Safe Boot, Chkdsk and the rest of it. This is on a machine with an i7 processor and 12GB of RAM. Avast is a paid-for Internet Security V9.
I've also been getting a number of service timeout errors (7011 etc.), where the services cannot communicate with the Service Control Manager inside the 30ms limits. These happened occasionally, but have now increased in number. I should add that, although I have a number of services and jobs running on startup, all that are not needed are set to Manual or Disabled. Although non-fatal, I don't like to see a new set of errors in the logs when previously they were clean. It seems that the timeout errors are definitely connected with the time and resource that Avast grabs, which then chokes off other services from starting in a timely fashion.
Any unnecessary programs in the Task Scheduler are disabled, with the exception of Avast Emergency Update, which is set to run at Logon i.e. at Startup. I don't know whether this is necessary or desirable, and why it cannot be run at a point after the system is fully up and running. I'll try to find out.
A workaround for the hanging problem seems to be to set Avast services to load after other system services, although this isn't ideal. I'm still getting timeout errors, so I suppose the only way to mitigate these is to edit the Registry to change the ServicesPipeTimeout entry to something more than 30ms. Even so, the bootup is now 3 minutes or so; more than before.
My style of working means that I'm not exceptionally bothered if the system doesn't boot up like lightning, but I do like it to get running properly in due course, without hangs and errors.
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Avast 2014 - 9.0.2008 was released earlier this afternoon. Whilst I don't know if that resolves this issue or not it may be worth checking. See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=139606.msg1018608#msg1018608 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=139606.msg1018608#msg1018608) for more information and download links.
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Avast 2014 - 9.0.2008 was released earlier this afternoon. Whilst I don't know if that resolves this issue or not it may be worth checking. See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=139606.msg1018608#msg1018608 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=139606.msg1018608#msg1018608) for more information and download links.
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Well that just made matters worse! Thanks AVAST
Not only is boot still very slow and the desktop icon first fully populate then turn white then slowly re-populate about 1 every 1-5 seconds but now the Firewall is not enabled and no reason given other than "Unable to start Firewall"
HP Pavilion G series, Win 7 Pro