Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: REDACTED on August 14, 2018, 03:13:05 AM
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Using windows 10 home and avast free. As the subject states, Avast suddenly stopped auto updating. Everything else is working fine. Looking at the log, it appears not to be getting a valid server name to go to.
After reading through various threads it appears the only path to fixing was to use avastclear. to delete and reinstall avast. I had already tried a manual update with the same results as the automatic, it acts like it can't resolve the DNS but it's not a valid dns anyway it's trying to go to http://files.avast.com which you can't go to from a browser.
Downloaded Avastclear, tried to boot into safemode and the documentation from windows didn't get me there so I just ran Avastclear. It stated I should run in safe mode and click to let it restart and do that. To my amazement it rebooted in safe mood and immediately started running Avastclear.
After a few minutes it stoped at "Deleting file C;/WINDOWS/system32/drivers/aswFW.sys"
I let it sit there for 15 minutes or so but nothing happened. I used Task Manager to end the Avastclear task. Restarted it, same results. Ended it again, for the heck of it created a dummy file in WINDOWS/System32/dirivers with that name. Restarted Avastclear with the same results. Deleted my dummy file, ended the task again and restarted Avastclear. Same results. It's been sitting at that message for the whole time I'm creating this post on another machine, so it's been there for quite some time, certainly over the original 15 minutes.
Everything else is working fine. FYI I am not running any VPN software.
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I'm leaving this up, just in case anyone else has the same situation. I just left it running while I awaited a possible solution here. Well amazingly some 2.5 hours or so later it moved on and finished! Sorry for the bother, but that does seem like a very long time to delete that one file that wasn't even there! By the way I had looked at task manager and it was barely using any increased resources while it was sitting there. Usually I see a program using more memory and or cpu when it's still working but it was staying pretty steady, which added to my belief that it was hung. I guess it must work a bit like windows startup, the last message displayed may not be the actual procedure it's working on? Hopefully a fresh install will not cure my problems, but I wanted to get this up.
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What version of avast free are you running?
...Downloaded Avastclear, tried to boot into safemode and the documentation from windows didn't get me there so I just ran Avastclear. It stated I should run in safe mode and click to let it restart and do that. To my amazement it rebooted in safe mood and immediately started running Avastclear. (Bolding added)
After a few minutes it stoped at "Deleting file C;/WINDOWS/system32/drivers/aswFW.sys"....
There is a stage in running aswclear.exe you did not see where you can select the avast version avast clear is supposed to remove. Example: https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility (https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility)
See step #4 and step #5. Default setting is to uninstall Avast Premier, which has a firewall.