Avast Free - UI Failed to load - completely useless antivirus

[bigtom]

How about that Avast start testing the products before releasing them to clients?

This new version's GUI cannot be started. After double clicking on the Avast icon, I get black screen with "UI Failed to load". Somewhere else in this forum, I read to start the Avast Antivirus Service. If I try, I immediatelly get error 1053 (service did not answer in time......).

I also tried the clear uninstall (twice), then I was not able to get rid of the Win10 boot menu "Uninstall Avast..." item, I had to remove it from MSConfig.

Then this new Avast Free version can be started, GUI can be opened, but the moment I switch to Passive mode, I am asked to restart Win10 and then the Avast GUI opens with black screen with "UI Failed to load". If I right click on the tray icon and choose to update the application, it crashes totally.

And last, the Avast Secure Browser Safe mode  does not work anymore - clicking the Open button does absolutely nothing.

Note, I need to use the Passive mode, because Avast is not able to secure its recognition by one of the greatest VPN service provider, which requires running antivirus in order to let me into the corporate VPN. In the Passive mode, the Secure Pulse Client recognizes the Windows Defender and let's me into the VPN.

[petr.kolacek]

How about that Avast start testing the products before releasing them to clients?

This new version's GUI cannot be started. After double clicking on the Avast icon, I get black screen with "UI Failed to load". Somewhere else in this forum, I read to start the Avast Antivirus Service. If I try, I immediatelly get error 1053 (service did not answer in time......).

I also tried the clear uninstall (twice), then I was not able to get rid of the Win10 boot menu "Uninstall Avast..." item, I had to remove it from MSConfig.

Then this new Avast Free version can be started, GUI can be opened, but the moment I switch to Passive mode, I am asked to restart Win10 and then the Avast GUI opens with black screen with "UI Failed to load". If I right click on the tray icon and choose to update the application, it crashes totally.

And last, the Avast Secure Browser Safe mode  does not work anymore - clicking the Open button does absolutely nothing.

Note, I need to use the Passive mode, because Avast is not able to secure its recognition by one of the greatest VPN service provider, which requires running antivirus in order to let me into the corporate VPN. In the Passive mode, the Secure Pulse Client recognizes the Windows Defender and let's me into the VPN.

Hi bigtom, we can look at the issue you reported here as there seems to be a problem with starting the main service for some reason. Please follow steps described here: https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/33/ and let us know the File ID so we can search for it on our side and analyze it. Thank you.

[bigtom]

Hi Petr,

this file was sent
20200703_0812_VXW4U_3481214144.zip

Tomáš

[petr.kolacek]

Hi Petr,

this file was sent
20200703_0812_VXW4U_3481214144.zip

Tomáš

Thank you Tomáši, looking at it and will get back to you as soon as we have something 

[petr.kolacek]

Hi Petr,

this file was sent
20200703_0812_VXW4U_3481214144.zip

Tomáš

Thank you Tomáši, looking at it and will get back to you as soon as we have something 

Tomáši, so we analyzed the Avast application logs and did not find, except one dump for crashed Avast UI, nothing serious there - in other words, the UI crash is not the root cause of the issue as the main problem is with starting the service. However there is no information in the our logs that would explain this behavior. The problem with service is also visible in the application and system event logs. However, there could be a problem either with the Windows registry and/or with the harddrive.

The following is the very common logged system event error:
DCOM got error "1084" attempting to start the service WSearch with arguments "Není k dispozici" in order to run the server:
{7D096C5F-AC08-4F1F-BEB7-5C22C517CE39}

Such issues are then translated to something like:
The 'DCOM got Error 1084' usually appears if you've recently updated your Windows which can be due to corrupt system files or registry errors. DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) is a Microsoft component that allows COM objects to communicate with each other.

If I have such an issue on my computer I would most probably:

• try to fix the registry (if this is the case) by a Windows repair installation
• also would execute scandisk to check and fix errors on harddrive if there are any, alternatively check the harddrive by some other application to check the overall condition of it

If both above points are performed, the disk is ok and the issue persists, we can try to check fresh output from the support tool to see whether something has changed and would give us some other direction to troubleshoot it.

Well, would be happy to be more sure what is going on the computer but this is our best guess based on the information we have now. Good luck and let us know the progress Have a nice weekend!

[JasonUK]

I had almost identical experience as bigtom but tried with both an existing Premium Security setup and clean installs of Avast Free & Avast Premium Security.  Initially I had problem when switching an existing Avast Premium Security setup, which had just updated to latest version, to an on-demand (ie Passive mode) scanner but UI Failed to Load message also appeared on all subsequent attempts to access settings post clean installations with both Free & Premium.

Regrettably I cannot add logfiles to the discussion though as I uninstalled Avast entirely and reverted to Windows Defender.

[daniber58]

In addition, also when started, Avast service do strange things...CPU from 20% and up to 75%... On a multi-user Windows 10 keeping logged an unlogged profile. Updating itself for "bad day" repair... Bit of a mess...
Especially playing online on Second Life, by Firestorm client, immediately makes service jump to 55-75% of CPU load, and stay there.

[chimpanzo]

I was getting the UTI failed to load error after the repair didn't work. So I finally uninstalled and downloaded it from the Avast top page. It gets to the point where it says that the program is installing but when the progress bar gets to the end, it just disappears from the screen and the program is not installed.

[loungehake]

Every Windows incarnation is unique.  Even two systems which were indentical at first use will quickly diverge from each other.  Windows has a remarkable resilience to continue to operate in spite of errors which creep in unseen and are invisible to the user.   Windows can handle its own errors but security software such as Avast, which gets deep into the kernel is liable to be caught out.  It is impossible for the Avast devs to anticipate 100% the foibles of a monstrous, complex and unpredictable software which is Windows.

Does every Windows user run chkdsk after every crash?  I doubt it but Windows is often still able to run reasonably after a crash even when a system element or setting has been temporarily lost or invlidated because of an uncorrected file system error because chkdsk was not run after the crash.  It would therefore not be surprising that Avast breaks in such a circumstance.

There, that's off my chest now.  If in doubt, run chkdsk.  It's a pain, especially after an unexpected system crash but the consequences of not doing it should be seriously considered.  If checking and correcting the system disks is not done fairly promptly after a crash then the damaging effects on Windows will worsen and the effects could become incorrectable (by attempting repair of the file system.

[JasonUK]

Tried another clean install of Avast Free which worked fine until I changed it to Passive Mode and GUI error occurs.

Suggested 'fix' in this article - https://support.avast.com/en-in/article/Troubleshoot-Embarrassing-UI-Failed-load - doesn't correct.

Uninstalled again.

[bigtom]

Hi Petr,
I scanned the SSD for error, none found. Scanning hte registry is more trickier as there is no reliable scanner (Avast itself has one that was pretty buggy, the CCleaner destroyed the whole system last time I tried).
But my W10 installation is quite new, started from scratch.
I run also sfc /scannow, also the DISM. I think we can now rule out the system integrity problems.

I did the avastclear.exe
Then the fresh isntallation. While in "Active" mode, the service is still running fine:


Next, I switch to the passive mode (note, I would appretiate if Avast fixes the reason that forces the whole our corporation to move away from Avast products).
The service is still running, I am asked by Avast to restart the computer.

[bigtom]

And after the restart, I get indeed the UI Failed to load. The Payment mode in the Secure Browser doe not work either, which is a critical severity issue.
I created one more log for you
20200706_1735_8Q4A9_1438913371.zip

The DCOM errors you reported earlier do not seem to be related, as WSeach service is not hte one we are debugging, and the error number is also different.
The hints are:
* the previous version of Avast Free worked without any such issue
* see above, more users have the same problem
* the "active" mode works fine, just the Passive mode causes crashing (passive mode is very needed - remember the totally crappy version avast released last year that did not work at all in "active" mode?)

We must conclude to start searching for the bug in the Avast Free latest release version. Since the approach to analyse the logs did not help, we must switch to the reverse engineering approach.
Please check the release notes, talk to RnD, analyze the source code of the application yourself and we will hope that you Avast manage to release a patch ASAP - remember, this is CRITICAL issue, no Payment mode is available.
Thanks, Tomáš

[petr.kolacek]

And after the restart, I get indeed the UI Failed to load. The Payment mode in the Secure Browser doe not work either, which is a critical severity issue.
I created one more log for you
20200706_1735_8Q4A9_1438913371.zip

The DCOM errors you reported earlier do not seem to be related, as WSeach service is not hte one we are debugging, and the error number is also different.
The hints are:
* the previous version of Avast Free worked without any such issue
* see above, more users have the same problem
* the "active" mode works fine, just the Passive mode causes crashing (passive mode is very needed - remember the totally crappy version avast released last year that did not work at all in "active" mode?)

We must conclude to start searching for the bug in the Avast Free latest release version. Since the approach to analyse the logs did not help, we must switch to the reverse engineering approach.
Please check the release notes, talk to RnD, analyze the source code of the application yourself and we will hope that you Avast manage to release a patch ASAP - remember, this is CRITICAL issue, no Payment mode is available.
Thanks, Tomáš

Hi Tomáši, thank you again for all the information you have provided, I successfully induced the problem and reported it to devs for fix. Will get back to you once we know something.

Just to be sure we are talking about the same issue, after installation of Avast Free on Windows 10, everything is running ok until you enable passive mode and restart the machine. Once you do it, the Avast service did not start, UI fails to load, etc. Is that correct? Thank you 

[JasonUK]

It's not just the free version that does this, it's the Premium Security one too.  The UI fails to load after passive mode has been selected.

[bigtom]

Hi Tomáši, thank you again for all the information you have provided, I successfully induced the problem and reported it to devs for fix. Will get back to you once we know something.

Just to be sure we are talking about the same issue, after installation of Avast Free on Windows 10, everything is running ok until you enable passive mode and restart the machine. Once you do it, the Avast service did not start, UI fails to load, etc. Is that correct? Thank you 

Hi Petr,
Correct. All is OK, until the Passive mode is enabled and Windows 10 restarted.
Do you anticipate any timeline when the fix is going to be issued? Since the Payment mode does not work either, I might need to go for plan B unless the fix comes quickly.
Tomáš