After restarting computer, icon has red on-access scanner icon, repair no help

[sjh55]

Greetings! Avast seems like a great program. I'm glad I found it before renewing with Norton SystemWorks, but I have what seems to be a common problem.

I have Avast Home 4.6 on WinXp Home Sp2. After installation Avast worked fine, but once computer is restarted the on-scanner icon has red circle and clicking/right-clicking is not available. I read the threads about using the Repair feature, but this does not work. If i uninstall and reinstall Avast it will work until I reboot my machine. There must be something blocking or shutting down the program on restart.

I uninstalled all Norton Utilities, files, and registry entries before installing Avast. I have a router and have tried Xp's firewall on and off, seems to make no difference. I don't have a software firewall. I do have Spybot installed. I'm not familiar with the Tea-something feature I read about in another thread.

I checked the Event Viewer>Antivirus and it contains numerous errors stating: ASWSIMPLE Application error. Error details: CaswSimpleDlg::OnInitDialog() - Program cannot load HAND cursor from: C:\WINDOWS\winhlp32.exe. 
 
Any help or suggestions about troubleshooting this problem would very much be appreciated.

[Lisandro]

See: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12169.0
Most probably your Windows Registry has a problem in the following keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\\VDD
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\\VDD
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\\VDD
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\\VDD
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet004\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers\\VDD

You must have the following entry there:
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\aswMonVd.dll

Can you post the contents of these Windows Registry keys in your system?

If this does not work, you can try 'avast External Control' clicking on 'Control' in my signature and enabling avast protection again...

[sjh55]

Two of the keys still contained Symantec data even though I used their removal procedures. So I deleted those references after backing up the keys. The other had the correct entry. There were no keys for ControlSet003 and 004, so I added them. The only entries in those keys now are Alwil and all are exactly as you show.

I rebooted and still have the red circle with a slash on the tray icon. The program works if I open it from the Start menu, and it seems to be scanning my mail. I used the boot scan last night. I tried the control link but it doesn't seem to do anything.

I guess with the red circle I don't have full time protection though, right?

[sjh55]

I downloaded and saved the Control. After using Restart Avast the icons are as they should be.

That should hold me until I figure out this issue.

Thanks for your help!

[Lisandro]

Glad that you succeed...
Can you check the entries of Registry again?
If you don't have avast! there you're 16bits (DOS) applications won't work, avast can't handle them

There were no keys for ControlSet003 and 004, so I added them.

It's not necessary. The keys you have are enough and correct.

[sjh55]

The registry entries are there and correct. When I started the computer this morning the red slashed circle was still on the tray icon. I checked all four Avast services in Computer Management and they had started automatically. Thought maybe I'd find something.

So I used the Auto-Restart external control you provided and it worked successfully. If I find the solution to this problem I'll be sure to post it.

 

[sjh55]

Finally, no more red circle with slash on tray icon after reboot. After performing numerous registry scans and manually searching the registry for anything related to Symantec, Systemworks, Ghost, etc. (except for those entries necessary to Windows firewall), the problem is fixed.

As I mentioned previously, I used Symantec's removal procedures, several times in fact, but there were still dozens of references left over.

Avast now starts when my computer starts. Yay!