Author Topic: Windows 8 Action Center complains about Defender + Avast! both being off  (Read 8672 times)

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Nounours

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Almost every time I boot my Windows 8 machine, I get a message from Action Center complaining that "windows defender and avast! antivirus are both turned off."

Usually it takes several clicks on the "turn on Avast!" dialogs to get rid of that message.

How do I get rid of this annoyance?

Offline DJBone

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Re: Windows 8 Action Center complains about Defender + Avast! both being off
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2013, 10:30:17 AM »
Hello and welcome to the forum! :)

Try a repair of avast:
Control Panel --> ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS (or Programs and Features) --> choose "avast! Antivirus" and select "REPAIR".
Restart your PC again.

DJBone
Win10 x64, APS (always latest version)
Avast Mobile Security (always latest version)

Nounours

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Re: Windows 8 Action Center complains about Defender + Avast! both being off
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2013, 12:21:47 PM »
I hate to say, but this doesn't fix the problem.

The Action Center error message finally disappears, but that's after I clicked on "Turn on and update avast! Antivirus" (which seems to run something called VisthAux.exe)

Next time I reboot I'll do nothing and see whether the message disappears by itself (startup timing issue?)

(BTW how do I include screenshots in a post? "Insert image" seems to want a URL...)

Offline CraigB

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Re: Windows 8 Action Center complains about Defender + Avast! both being off
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2013, 01:29:23 PM »
I encountered this problem yesterday with the action centre not recognising avast on a Win7 system though, a repair didn't help so a simple un-install and re-install fixed the problem with no need to run the removal tool.

Nounours

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Re: Windows 8 Action Center complains about Defender + Avast! both being off
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2013, 08:57:38 PM »
This is actually a timing issue: after booting, when "launching the desktop" a lot of things seem to initialize asynchronously. By the time the Action Center starts some AV/WD stuff is probably "not yet ready" so the Action Center complains. If I just wait (haven't timed it but seems like several long minutes) then the message disappears...

Jonathan Firschein

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"This is actually a timing issue: after booting, when "launching the desktop" a lot of things seem to initialize asynchronously. By the time the Action Center starts some AV/WD stuff is probably "not yet ready" so the Action Center complains. If I just wait (haven't timed it but seems like several long minutes) then the message disappears..."

I had the same thing.  I found that if I temporarily prevented my anti-malware software from initializing at start up and rebooted that the message about Avast and Defender went away.  Then, I re-started the malware programs.  I have three of them - too many; I've got to uninstall one of them.  They may be creating conflicts depending on their initialization order.  Even a reboot by itself may work.

Offline essexboy

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I have been suffering the same problem... It is a windows error

Run this section "Re-register WMIUTILS.DLL|"  from here http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-does-not-detect-installed-firewall-antivirus