on-access protection won't start

[lizard]

My avast icon has a red circle with a line through it & when I try to start the on-access protection, it won't start.  I read in one of the posts where someone told a poster (with a similar problem) to check the task manager to see if the services are running & then he listed 5 items that should be in the task manager.  So I checked mine, & I found I am missing 2 of the 5 items:

ashwebsv.exe
ashmaisv.exe

How do I remedy this?  (The other poster was not missing these items & so nothing was said as to what to do if they are missing).

[Thorny]

Hi Lizard,

Welcome to the Avast forum, although I am no expert I will try to help you

I believe that the two services that you are missing are the Mail scanner and the Web scanner!

Please look in Control Panel, Add/Remove programs and click on Change/Remove Avast.

Open Change and make sure that all of the options are ticked in Resident Protection, if they are not, tick ones missing and press next .... Avast will then update its components.   You may have to re-boot your computer at this point to see if the scanners are functioning correctly.

If all of the options are ticked or the update did not correct your problem.

Then in Add/ Remove programs open Change/ Remove Avast and on click on the Repair option, hopefully this will fix any missing/corrupt  parts of the program.

[DavidR]

Did you get any error/warning when you installed avast?
Are you getting ay error messages on start-up?

Do (or did) you have another AV installed on this system, if so what?

[lizard]

In response to the first suggestion....I went through & did the change & repairs in the add/remove programs.  It looked like it worked as the red circle went away - then a message came up that avast needed to restart the computer.  I closed it initially as I wanted to do something else before restarting the computer.  After restarting it, the circle was back again. 

In response to the 2nd suggestion...no, I've never had any error messages.  And no, I have no other AV installed on the system. 

The 1 thing I am suspicious about is that I use Zone Alarm for my firewall.  It seems that frequently if the zone alarm is working okay - I'm having these troubles with avast.  If my avast is working okay - my zone alarm won't activate.  Could this be the problem & is there another firewall that might be more compatible with Avast as I would rather get rid of Zone Alarm than I would Avast.

[DavidR]

Are you using ZA free, ZA Pro or do you have the ZA Security Suite which includes anti-virus?

Check this out re Zone Alarm and avast's Web Shield, etc. [url]http://www.avast.com/eng/webshield_issues.html[/url]

You may need to try an uninstall, reboot, install, reboot of avast!

[lizard]

I use ZA free - no utility suite with AV. 

I did already try to uninstall AV & re-install it last night (after reading through other posts on this forum suggesting to do the same) - unfortunately, I'm still having the same problems.

[szc]

ZA expecially free version works perfect with avast!. So it shouldn't give you any problems. Do you by any chance have some traces of some other antivirus left on your machine ?

Also, what is your mail client and which providers inside On-Access Scanner you have enabled ?

[DavidR]

Perhaps an uninstall, reboot and install of ZA free (a pain I know)?

Is this the latest version of ZA?
Do you have any other security software installed?

Is there anything in the avast! Log Viewer?
You might want to increase the Logging information in the Program Settings to include Debug (pointer opposite the Debug). Once you have done this reboot, watch for any messages on avast starting and then check the avast log viewer and windows event log.

Is there anything in the windows event log?

[lizard]

I'm quite sure there are no traces of other antivirus apps on this computer as its a new computer & I installed Avast from the get-go. 

My mail client is Mozilla Thunderbird.  I'm not sure what you mean by "which providers inside On-Access Scanner you have enabled?".

[Zagor]

I'm not sure what you mean by "which providers inside On-Access Scanner you have enabled?".

Left click the tray icon/Which one of the providers on the left are not working (ones that are not working are colorless).

[szc]

Yes thanks Zagor,

I saw this in his initial post:

So I checked mine, & I found I am missing 2 of the 5 items:

ashwebsv.exe
ashmaisv.exe

That's why I asked him what's his mail client... (ashmaisv.exe)... I believe avast! repair option would help in this case.

[Zagor]

Well, somehow I resisted in saying "this was what I ment" instead "what he ment", cause it would look like I was reading your mind
Although you're my good friend, and I know you, I'm not sure that mind reading will be accurate 

[lizard]

Well I started up my computer this morning & lo & behold, the red circle disappeared & the on access protection is enabled.  This has happened before when, after turning on the computer & it for some reason decides to work.  But this is after I've had the computer turned off & on several times since the red circle appeared (so its not just a matter of re-starting the computer - I usually try that first).  So, I guess I'll postpone further investigation until the red circle appears again - unless anyone has any further ideas??

[szc]

Further ideas ? We gave you few ideas...

Best suggestion we can give you is to go and perform a repair of avast! antivirus...

Control/Panel - Add/Remove Programs - avast! Antivirus - Change/Remove

When window opens, scroll down to REPAIR and chose that one... Click NEXT and you're good from there... 

Another thing is... if you are using avast! Home Edition, change your ODBC database to XML. See here how to do it:



DO NOT forget to reboot your PC after changing your database from ODBC to XML... you will not see any changes until you reboot. When I think twice, try my suggestion number two first... (Changing ODBC to XML) and if that doesn't work (and it should work), proceed with repairing of avast!

[lizard]

I will try & ODBC database to XML (when the circle appears again & the on access protection again won't turn on)  - that is a suggestion that hasn't been previously posted. 

You must not have read my previous posts carefully - I DID do the repair thing (from the change/remove programs), I DID re-install Avast.  The circle still remained after I did those things & restarted the computer.  It only disappeared after several restarts later for who knows what reason.  But I will try your above NEW  suggestion.....