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However, I would guess because you have installed avast in a non-standard folder, awsclear.exe and RejZor's External Control Tool may have difficulty not finding the avast installation where expected, especially if avast has been partially uninstalled so the uninstall information is not available,so defaults may be used (incorrectly in this case).
This may well be the reason files were left behind as you mentioned, though I can't say for certain.
David, what you say may well be what is happening.
I guess I would need to reinstall to theose two non-standard directories and then use Avast's Add/Remove entry or perhaps RejZor's Avast External Control tool or even both on *each* of the two recreated folders. Then I would need to install Avast to it's usual "Alwil" folder in order to try and standardise the new installation. But even then Avast may not work any better. :-( All the reboots involved to do this cleanly make it seem too daunting for me to try.
I have not installed to the default which I recall is "C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast". And I prefer not to do so as I do not remember supplier's names as well as I remember their software's name.
This could be a contributory factor, there could possibly be multiple registry entries for avast.
I too am running out of ideas, but running a registry cleaner looking for registry keys that have bad/missing links may get rid of any invalid avast registry entries.
I ran three different registry cleaners and was pretty aggressive in my selection of I threw out. Then i rebooted and then installed Avast before I touched anything else. After Avast installed I rebooted as requested by the setup program. As the system came back up, the firewall (Zone Alarm) said Avast setup wanted to pass so I said yes. Then I got a second identical message and I said yes again. Immediately after that I got a Win Explorer open at System32 which I know is due to the empty value in the Avast entry of the "Run" key (see passim).
No icon in the system tray. Avast does not intercept the system when I run the EICAR test file. The only Avast processes i can see running are ashMaiSv.exe, ashServ.exe and aswUpsSv.exe.
After this I run RejZor's tool and only then do I see an Avast window which says "Welcome to avast! Home Edition" and which gives me 60 days. I must have scrubbed the day counter in my registry cleaning and yet in none of this was I asked for a registration number. Then the icons appear with an introductory balloon message.
Avast is now working and detects Eicar when I try to run it (although not if I run Eicar.com in the XP DOS window).
I reboot and it is all back to square one. No icons. System32 window. Same processes running as before.
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By the way, is Avast trying to be a bit clever in how it passes through a firewall to update itself? My Zone Alarm has trapped Avast's 16 attempts occurring every two seconds to update itself. And yet I have got *all* instances of Avast in Zone Alarm's Program Control set to be permitted to pass.
In my Zone Alarm there are entries for "avast antivirus service", "avast! antivirus update" "avast e-Mail Scanner Service" and "avast Web Scanner. I have no program of any sort whatsoever which I explitly block - all programs are either invited to ask me when they try to pass through or they have explicit permission from my settings. I have no andvanced firewall settings. If anything I tend to permit rather too much through the firewall than too little.
It looks to me that Avast was looping in trying to connecting to somewhere and that my firewall decided that it was under repeated probing or an attack and shut off access temporarily. I know my old Sygate firewall did this and probably Zone Alarm does too.
I am making a separate post of the Zone Alarm log as this board's software does notpermit me to inlcude it here as the posting is too long.
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I can think of only two last things before I remove Avast permanently:
(1) I will manually edit the registry to put in the correct value of the Avast entry in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Can you tell me what this should be?
(2) Maybe I can invoke RejZor's "Show Tray Icon" routine (as the first checkbox in his Avast Tweaker option of his Avast External Control tool
What do you suggest?
rgds, Smolls
