HELP ME! Resident protection and avast! don't work!

[Snowball]

First of all, I tried to get some help on that forum about that issue AND I have polish program version so I'm not sure what are english names of program stuff.
The problem is: Resident Protection doesn't work (it has red crossed circle on the 'a' icon), and when I try to make it work (by clicking Control->Start [?]) nothing happens. So I try to start providers one by one - Communicators protection, standard protection, P2P protection and all, but I get message 'The operation couldn't be finished' or sth like that. I have 7 providers available and none active. I think guido87 had a problem like mine.
The second thing is that I cannot start Avast! I open the program:

'Uruchom Avast!' - Begin the program

The system cannot find the determined device or the file.
'The Avast! welcoming screen' cannot load the configuration.

The system cannot find the determined device or the file.
'Simple user interface' can't load the configuration.

I think 'Ekran powitalny Avast!' ('The Avast! welcoming screen') and 'Prosty interfejs użytkownika' ('Simple user interface') are application forms. The first is kind of splash screen, the second is application form which contains scanning tools and stuff. I written what are the forms because I don't know if I translated them well.

And I could have forgotten: I'm using WinXP on Celeron D (1,7GHz) + 256Mb Ram and I was using Kaspersky but now I got back to Avast! because trial period ended ;-).

Please, tell me what should I do? Reply to me what you want to see.

[DavidR]

This can be related to having another AV installed or possibly remnants left behind after uninstall.

Run this utility to remove all traces of Kaspersky from the registry:
http://www.ice-kav.com/downloads/util/KAV_Registry_Clean.zip
ICE is a US distributor for Kaspersky.
KIS6 Removal - http://support.kaspersky.com/downloads/kis6/kiskav6remove.zip

[Snowball]

Thanks a lot for that tools, they are very useful but it seems that not for me. I used both of them, reinstalled Avast!, even tried to repair installation but nothing works. 'A' icon is still covered with red mark and I still get the same messages. What should I do? Don't tell me to format HDD and start everything from scratch, I did it about month ago (BTW it was because of virus, which turned my computer into email spamming zombie, I had avast! installed [and working]

[DavidR]

I doubt a format would have any effect.

Check out this web page and see if there is anything that helps.
AAVM subsytem detected and RPC error. http://www.avast.com/eng/faq-other-questions.html#idt_1539

Try this, right click the avast 'a' icon, select Program Settings, Troubleshooting, tick the 'Delay loading of avast! services after other system services,' reboot and see if that has any effect.

[Snowball]

I've just done what you adviced. The site what you posted didn't help, because I had Avast! both started and set to automatic. And AAVM (I don't know what is it at all) didn't detect any problems (nothing about RPC). I did what you showed on a posted screen shot, rebooted and... nothing works. I waited until it runs and it didn't (I thought that if it's delayed, I might have to wait). Do you have any more ideas?

[DavidR]

If you click on the avast icon (try it) when it has the red circle it often displays an error which is AAVM sub-system detecting a problem with RPC and avast is reliant on the PRC service. I was hoping that by delaying avast it would allow allow for windows system services to run and avoid any possible issue with RPC error.

Those that have experienced this red circle with bar have usually resolved it by checking out the options suggested. The AV installed or remnants being probably the most common issue.

Did you install avast in the default location ?
e.g. C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4, you can install it in a different location, but it is important that there are no non-ascii characters (those with accents e.g. Ü) in the path to the installed folder.

If you did choose a different folder you could try a reinstall in the default location, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot.

[Snowball]

You were right! I installed Avast! in location:
D:\PROGRAMY\OGÓLNE\Alwil Software\Avast!
and it contained Ó which is an unicode character!
Thank you a lot, everything works now! I don't know how to thank you!!!

[DavidR]

No problem, glad I could help.

Welcome to the forums.