services not loading at start up

[johnnytaco]

hi, im having some issues
yesterday i installed avast4.something home
on a laptop running xp sp2, that has no connection to the internet

once i rebooted, the startup login screen takes much longer,
my taskbar will not appear, the drivers for my wacom tablet dont load,
opening any windows takes approx. 30 seconds and shutting down windows
takes very long.

at first i tried checking off the option to delay avast until other resources had loaded but there was no change

then i tried to uninstall avast, i am unsure if it uninstalled successfully because a few minutes later
i came back and my laptop was in the process of rebooting...it did not give me confirmation but the avast folder seems to be empty.

however, the problem still exists.

installing avast is the only thing i have done to my computer in the past week.

any help would be appreciated as im desperate to get back to work.

thanks,
jt

edit: i have reinstalled avast and removed the reg entry group...just tryin stuff at this point
but it doesnt seem to have had an effect

[DavidR]

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

What avast Processes are running in task manager, they begin with ash or asw ?

What other security based software do you have that might have an impact on start-up, e.g. anti-spyware, SpySweeper, Spyware Doctor (StartUpGuard or OnGuard), PrevX, WinPatrol, ProcessGuard, etc. ?

Are you getting any errors, if so what ?

If there might be a problem with add remove uninstall, download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD so you can find it later. Run add remove programs, reboot, run the uninstall utility, this should mop up any possible remnants, reboot and re-install.

[johnnytaco]

thanks for your reply

the only avast process i notice in task manager is aswUpdsv.exe, since my laptop has no internet connection
i had the updates set to manual, so im not sure if that should be runnning or not.

i dont have any other security software running. i do have system mechanic installed, but to my knowledge
nothing from that should run on startup... allthough when i try to open it to find out, the process comes up in
task manager but the app never launches.

when this first happened i was getting an error on startup about a missing newdot* file.
last night i ran the uninstaller that i found in the newdot folder and that seemed to uninstall it.
the error no longer shows.

i ran the avast uninstaller, and when it came to the uninstallation in progess screen, it was blank
with no progress bar, just a cancell button....after about 15 minutes i hit the cancel button and it gave
me the "uninstallation is not complete are you sure you want to quit?", i hit no, waited another 5 minutes then cancelled
and hit yes... then i thought maybe i could uninstall it by running the setupeng.exe again
but when i ran that it jumped to the "avast has been successfully uninstalled" screen and asked if i wanted to reboot

rebooted and ran the uninstall utility, pointed it to c:\program files\avast4 (where i had installed to)
rebooted... shaved my beard again. .. and nothing....still the same issue im afraid

i tried to disable anything remotely unneccessary from the startup and i guess ill see how that goes  :'(

also i tired to run my wacom tablet setup to see if it would load the drivers and it said that they are gone.
did avast possibly quarantined or moved them? i know this all sounds a little silly, but i literally have done nothing with my
laptop since i installed avast and started this wierdness...

[DavidR]

When you set a service to manual, it is available to be started by a process that requires it, so it would appear avast is starting it if it is in the task manager processes list.

The newdot* (newdotnet) reference is usually associated with adware so something was on your system, if avast or another application removed it without removing the registry entry responsible for running it then there would be a pop-up error for a missing file, etc. The strange thing is how would this potential adware get on your system when it doesn't connect to the internet. Also if that is/was on there I wonder if there might be something else.

The problem with also uninstalling would seem to point to a failed installation, though I'm at a loss as to why the uninstall utility hasn't worked. This is the first time I have heard that in over three years on the forums. This isn't much comfort to you but just shows how unusual it is so I have no reference information that might help.

avast shouldn't quarantine or move or delete anything without first alerting to an infection and you the user has to input which action to take. So I fear there is something else going on with your system.

If you haven't already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it, preferably in safe mode.
1. AVG anti-spyware (formerly Ewido) or a-Squared free.
Or SUPERantispyware Or Spyware Terminator
2. Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition

[johnnytaco]

hopefully none of these details will change much of the situation but i forgot to mention
that it is an intel mac, running both OSX and XP, the XP side has no internet connection
but from time to time i do download little programs on the mac side, copy them over and install
them in the windows side.... usually little demo graphic programs, etc etc. so if i do in fact
have ad or mal ware it has probably come from one of those. that is also the reason i decided to
avast in the first place, just to give the system a once over.

also when i initially installed avast the first time, i set a boot time scan, whhich i ended up
cancelling half way through because i ran out of time and had to go to work.
i dont know if that would have had any effect, but that was when all the issues started.

i think the uninstaller did work, in the sense that i no longer have any traces of avast
on my computer, and im not blaming avast for the issues im having, but unfortunately
whatever chain of events took place from installing avast the other day have not been
"undone" by the uninstallation. i could cook and eat a meal in the time it takes windows
to log on or off.

i have also made another discovery, in addition to my taskbar and tablet driver being missing
i can no longer move the icons on my desktop, or drag and drop contents of a zip file.

i installed and ran ad-ware se and AVG

avg didnt want to complete installation and hung trying to execute guard.exe, so i killed the process
and it seemed ok after that

avg found a few things:

IntCodec,
NewDotNet,
Backdoor.RBot.bry,
Download.small
adware.generic

quarantined those, reinstalled my tablet drivers and rebooted....

still the same problems 

well at least ive gotten rid of those few things....

any other ideas?

thanks again for your help


edit: my pen tablet driver is gone AGAIN. (?)

[DavidR]

I don't know if the dual boot in a Mac way have any potential effect, I have no experience of dual boot, and less (if that is possible) of Mac dual boot to windows XP.

IntCodec,
NewDotNet,
Backdoor.RBot.bry,
Download.small
adware.generic

Well some of these could be causing problems, in that two could be downloading stuff, Backdoor.RBot.bry, Download.small. I know you said that the XP system doesn't have any internet connection and I don't know if somehow they would be able to get out using the Mac connection.

Do you have a firewall, that should be capable of blocking unauthorised outbound Internet Connections (like the two above) ?

[johnnytaco]

i dont think there would be anyway for them to get out through the mac connection
the two OSes never run at the same time and are on seperate partitions of the HD
so whichever side isnt running is completely dormant also i do have a firewall on the mac side.

and these guys must have been on my system for at least a month now, because i havent
added downloaded stuff in quite a while, other than avast, ad aware and avg.

plus even now that they are supposedly cleaned up, all of my problems still exist.

mi going to try running bootvis and see if that give me any clue
as to the sudden slow startups and shutdowns....

man this is killing me....   

[DavidR]

I would say that your startups are fine, 30 seconds on windows is considered fast, mine takes about one minute from boot to everything stopped activity, e.g. avast loaded, firewall, SnagIt and video card controller loaded. I would say my system specs are probably on the low side.

Shutting down is faster on my system, but I have UHPclean.exe (User Profile Hive) clean as I used to have slow shutdowns (a common windows problem inherited from as far back as win98 and possibly longer) due to some process not responding, etc. and that cleared out the issues. I had to download the UHPclean.exe from windows.

But you certainly have other issues going on with the driver problem, etc. I don't know if it would be advantageous to reinstall windows or try a recovery console repair, etc.

[johnnytaco]

sorry, poor choice of words on my part
in my initial statement i meant that opening any windows "aka a folder on my desktop" takes approx 30 seconds

ive timed my startup and shutdown today (out of boredom and frustration)

windows startup takes 4min 30sec to display my desktop wallpaper
then about another 15 seconds to show my dektop icons and quicklaunch sidebar

shutdown takes a whopping 16min and 15sec! 
just sitting there on the logout screen

i really dont want to reinstall windows at the moment because im in the middle of a prokects schedule
and would have to go about reinstalling alot of software and configuring it all.... 

bootvis doesnt want to install for me because it says that my
"windows installer is not correctly installed"
that is a classic!!! 
and when i try to turn it on under the services, the window just dissappears

i swear, the devil got in this laptop somehow

im currently running sfc /scannow, but it looks like its going to take a really long time
either that or the status bar isnt working. 

[DavidR]

What is going on in the 30 seconds whilst you are opening a windows folder, is the avast icon rotating ?
What is the Windows Task Manager CPU usage whilst this is going on and what process is using the most CPU% ?

Try this to see if it improves the windows startup, avast, Program Settings, Troubleshooting, check the arrowed option.

[johnnytaco]

thanks again for the response

im afraid delay option that was actually the first thing i tried. 

at the moment avast in uninstalled, and even if it were installed i wouldnt
be able to see its icon because the taskbar is gone..

its seems astough there is a process just hanging, preventing things
also alot of my programs dont seen to run,
(they show up in taskmanager, but the actual program never initializes)
but ive googled most of the processing that are running and nothing
seems out of the ordinary.

when i look at the cpu usage while waiting for a window to open
nothing seems out of the ordinary, the cpu is between 1 and 20%
system idle has about 99% of the cpu
and explorer is taking the most memory at about 22mb

[DavidR]

I'm at a loss as to what to suggest as I have zero experience of Mac's and dual boot and you seem to have more issues going on that just your problem with avast.

I'm at a loss as to why your taskbar is gone, auto-hide could be a culprit, see image these are my default settings for Start Menu tab, Start Menu option selected, Customize... button.

Where these issues there before installing avast ?
As I have never in just over three years in the forums I have never come across this, that however, has been on PC systems with windows as the OS and not a Mac system dual booting to windows.

I'm hoping that one of the Alwil team can pick up on this as I have no experience of this problem.

[Lisandro]

at the moment avast in uninstalled, and even if it were installed i wouldnt
be able to see its icon because the taskbar is gone.

Other problem, not related to avast, is doing that... explorer.exe is being crashed and the taskbar disappears. Do you have any other guess that could help you to follow this and troubleshoot? I mean, other antivirus installed, even in the past, other security programs...

[johnnytaco]

my laptop for all intents and purposes is a windows machine with a mac keyboard when running in windows
there are a few extra drivers required but other than that its the same install ver of
xp that i had on my desktop before.

i know that it seems impossible that avast would cause any of these problems, and i sincerely hope
that im not overlooking something, but the reason i came to this forum was that
all of these issues happened exactly after my reboot of installing avast two days ago
and that is the only thing i have changed on my system in a month.

explorer doesnt seemed to be crashed as i still have the two quicklaunch docks that are at the top
and righthand side of my desktop, its process is still running in the taskmanager, and i can open windows
but it just takes a little bit.... possibly there is something 'choking' the explorer task?

also there is still a small line at the bottom of my screen that gives me the resize cursor as if the
taskbar is just hidden however i cannot pull it up.... its almost as if the bitmap for the taskbar is gone
so windows is displaying nothing in its place.

other than system mechanic and avast (and now avg and ad aware)
i haven't had any other security or av programs installed on this computer

sfc didnt turn up anything, and my computer showed clean on both scans of ad ware and avg with
up to date databases

i understand if you guys cant help me much further, and i sincerely thank you
for your efforts

[Lisandro]

explorer doesnt seemed to be crashed
also there is still a small line at the bottom of my screen that gives me the resize cursor as if the  taskbar is just hidden however i cannot pull it up.... its almost as if the bitmap for the taskbar is gone

Well... seems the toolbar is there and you need to resize it.
Which theme are you using into Windows?
Right click the desktop > Properties > on the window that popup choose Appearance. See if the advanced settings aren't changed, specially for the 'active title bar'.