Home Edition not scanning

[megaman04]

The free home edition avast antivirus program on my friend's computer has stopped working.  She can no longer scan her local drive.  I'm helping her with this problem.  Three messages appear when I click on the avast icon.  Now, I'm not able to even go through the memory testing aspect at all.  These are the three messages.  First message, "Storage cannot be created for the "Splash" task."  Second message, "Configuration is not loaded properly.  Error: dbsCreateObject."  Third message, "Program cannot save parameters to the storage.  Error: dbsCreateObject."  I uninstalled avast, then downloaded the entire program again, and still the above messages appear.  I went through the repair aspect, but that didn't help.  I noticed at the bottom right hand corner of the monitor screen near the "time clock" on the task bar, the "blue avast ball has a little red circle with a red backward slash that's located in the lower "left corner" of the avast icon.  The red circle with the red dash wasn't there before.  I right clicked on the avast icon, and selected program settings to see if I could fix the problem, but the program setting feature is inactive.  The interesting thing is that after connecting to the internet, I still received audio message and blue screen from avast indiccating that avast has successfully updated the program, but I still cannot scan.  The computer I'm using is a PC, running on ME.  I'm not using any other antivirus program.  I've uninstalled and reinstalled the free home edition twice, but I cannot do any scanning.  Does anyone know, first of all, what the red circle with the red backward slash is all about; second, and more importantly, how to find solutions to the three error messages that I've mentioned above, and finally, how to fix the problem so my friend can scan again.  The scanning has not worked for a week now.  I have posted this problem in another area, but no one so far has been able to find a solution.  I've followed their suggestions, but none have remedied the problem.  Can anyone tackle this problem?  Thanks, Megaman

[szc]

Right click avast! blue sphere icon in your system tray, and click on PROGRAM SETTINGS...

When new window is open chose TROUBLESHOOTING (last item in the list at the left side). You'll get this screen:



Put a checkmark on USE XML STORAGE INSTEAD OF ODBC. She uses Home edition, so make it use XML instead of ODBC.  It says, DO NOT CHANGE UNLESS INSTRUCTED TO DO SO... well you've just been instructed to do so.

Oh yes... do that and you'll fix all your problems above mentioned. Red circle means, avast! is not working as it should. Follow my advice and it will work.

After you put a checkmark, DO NOT FORGET to reboot your system. It is very important to reboot it. After you log back in to Windows, problem should be gone.

[megaman04]

Right click avast! blue sphere icon in your system tray, and click on PROGRAM SETTINGS...

When new window is open chose TROUBLESHOOTING (last item in the list at the left side). You'll get this screen:



Put a checkmark on USE XML STORAGE INSTEAD OF ODBC. She uses Home edition, so make it use XML instead of ODBC.  It says, DO NOT CHANGE UNLESS INSTRUCTED TO DO SO... well you've just been instructed to do so.

Oh yes... do that and you'll fix all your problems above mentioned. Red circle means, avast! is not working as it should. Follow my advice and it will work.

After you put a checkmark, DO NOT FORGET to reboot your system. It is very important to reboot it. After you log back in to Windows, problem should be gone.

Craftec, thank you for your advice and the graphic, but I already tried to access the troubleshooting page via the program setting feature from the avast icon tray.  When I right clicked on the "program setting," nothing appeared on the screen.  So how do I access the trouble shooting page to make the XML change?  If I can get to that page and make the change, then that would be great!  Thank you, Megaman

[galooma]

It sounds like the installation was corrupted to the point that the previous AV maybe wasnt completely removed.
I suggest when you can to find out wether this is the case and run a decent registry cleaner like REG SUPREME http://www.macecraft.com/brief_rs/ and give the installation one last try
good luck 

[szc]

What I suggested was kind of automatic procedure of changing database type from ODBC to XML.

Let's try to do it manually this time. Open your avast4.ini file. By default it's located in C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\ subfolder.

Simply open it with NOTEPAD. Search for this line:

Database=ODBC

Spot that there is no space in between "=" and ODBC. Simply erase ODBC part and instead of ODBC, type XML. Remember, no spaces in between "=" and XML. So your line should look like this:

Database=XML

DO NOT CHANGE anything else ! Chose FILE from the NOTEPAD's dropdown menu, and click on SAVE. That's it. When you are 100% sure file is saved, restart your computer. See if anything is changed.

Cheers!

P.S. As Cloussau already mentioned, if you had any other antivirus installed in your system prior to avast! and it's not properly uninstalled, there is nothing that can help you to fix this unless you completely uninstall any single trace of previous antiviruses from your system. In this case, that includes uninstalling of avast! as well. System must be 100% clean prior installing any resident antivirus. As you may already know, two resident antiviruses will juts kill each other, and all you'll have is unbelievable headaches.

What was the previous antivirus that was installed prior to avast! if you had any ?

[DavidR]

This is the third thread on virtually the same topic this doesn't help, when you have received help in the orriginal thread you posted in. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17403.msg149063#msg149063

This duplicates effort, causes confusion and wastes time, I'm done wasting any more.