Avast Upgrade from 4.x to 5 causes Outlook Plugin error and unwanted reboot

[MKop]

We had an installation of 4.x managed clients.    I began testing the move to the latest 5.x managed clients. 

I created the auto-deploy package for a select group.   I choose to NOT reboot after deployment.   I left all the rest as default.   The admin guide states that previous versions of avast would be removed for the install.   I ran the job for deployment to test. 

The PC in that group began the installation, and then began a reboot even though I removed that option in the deployment job.  Was this due to the uninstallation of 4.x?   If yes, how can I suppress that?   

After the PC restarted, version 5 was ready and I could see it in the console.    Testing some apps, MS outlook would give an error when opening.   "The Add-in Avast ...aswOutXt.dll cannot be loaded".    Obviously, the previous 4.x had an email shield or something similar for outlook.   The auto-remove of 4.x didn't remove this entry from Outlook.   

Now everytime Outlook starts, the user will have this error.

I'm going to go through and see if I can script a solution to unregister the DLL and remove the reg key for this addon.   Somehow, I'll get that script to run after Avast is installed....   

Does anyone have a better solution for this?

[Laneg004]

My machines all reboot after deployment too, even though I told them not to.

As for the Avast 4 error when opening outlook, I was getting that too. I've just been going from machine to machine and under outlook's trust center I remove the check from Avast! 4.

Tools, Trust Center, Add-ins, Exchange Client Extensions, uncheck "Avast! 4".

[MKop]

In further testing, I've found that it's the uninstall of the previous Avast version that is requiring the reboot.   The install of the avast 5 client's reboot is supressed, but not the required reboot for the uninstall.   

[lukas.hasik]

1, forgotten Outlook dll -> bug
2, unexpected reboot - this is complicated. The reboot is required after uninstall of 4.8 and install of 6.0. However we don't know if the "job" will reinstall or not (destination computer conditions are unknown...). I see the technical reason for reboot however I understand your confusion... What would you prefer?

[MKop]

On #2, The uninstall of 4.x needing a reboot is understood.   However that leaves 2 bad options that I see. 

Option 1: Suppress the reboot for 4.x uninstall.   This leaves the computer in an unprotected state until the end user decides to reboot the PC allowing ver 5 to get installed.   

Option 2: Leave the forced reboot for 4.x and have angry clients complain that there was no warning about a pending reboot.   


So to get around this, I am pushing avast_managed.exe out via group policy on login.   This way, no user has a chance to have any work open when 4.x is uninstalled.    The reboot is immediate and 5 goes right in after the PC comes up.   By bypassing the console deployment, I can control the time of the reboot. 

It would be nice if the uninstall process had a configurable time before a forced reboot.  i.e. ("your machine will reboot in 5 minutes.  Save your work")  or something to that effect.    Otherwise, when you deploy via job, someone may lose work when the reboot happens with no warning.

[wpn]

@MKop

Sometimes its not possible to keep a user 100% working and 100% happy when upgrading/updating software.
Then the communication skills of the IT department come looking around the corner.

As i see it there are 2 sollutions:

1) Leave all computers turned on after office hours, then deploy at 21:00 or so.
   That way the computers can reboot what they want and no users are mad

2) Communicate that the anti virus package is getting upgraded but that it needs a forced reboot of the system. This reboot is absolutely necessary to be able to keep protecting the users from virusses and other malicious software which could potentially destroy their documents.
The AV software is hooked into the OS in such deep level that a reboot is just necessary, no questions asked.
It takes tops 5 minutes to reboot right? Most people take longer to get a cup of coffee or go for a smoke.


You can possibly also deploy it during lunch time when everybody is in the cafetaria

[randydodd]

As for item 1, Outlook DLL for v4.8, i still am getting that error, and still had to go thru and manually get rid of that for each client. Needs to be fixed.

As for item 2, I've been with Avast for years, and you guys always seem to like to just take over the machine, and reboot without notice. You really got to change your philosophy. Need to give user control to either reboot now, or later. Or set a timer of several minutes. I've been burned a lot by that one. Even with proper communications and off-hours installs. (Some of us run 24 hour shops!).

thanks for considering it.

[studio_two]

Hello,

On my network, this seems to only affect Windows XP / Outlook 2007 (three workstations in total). All other upgrades (including Windows 7 / Outlook 2010) have worked flawlessly.

When Outlook 2007 Starts up, we get a plugin error relating to avast4.

I had a look within Outlook => Add-Ins => Exchange Client Extensions, but I was only able to "unckeck" this on ONE of the workstations. The other machines do not have any plugin listed for avast4.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Stephen

PS: Is this thread titled correctly? Shouldn't it be v4.8 => v6?

[ianh64]

Just to add my 2p on the outlook add-in issue.

I have done a trial 4.8 to 6 install on a handful of machines and have had this issue on two of them.

The last one I was trying to work around the blank sending of emails via Outlook/Exchange server by deploying with the mail scanner turned off. I think this may also have been the case with the other machine that I had this issue. Another machine that I tried it on deployed fine.

I don't know if this Outlook 4.8 addin not being deleted is something to do with deploying v6 without the mail scanner.

My experience is that the Outlook 4.8 plug-in is actually cached on a per users basis. So its old presence needs to be deleted from every user profile on the machine.

After disabling the Avast 4.8 outlook add-in and closing Outlook, I rename extend.dat to entend.old_dat for every occurrence of it %localappdata%/microsoft/outlook (or presumably %appdata% in XP)

Quite a lot of manual intervention. I have an upgrade from 4.8 to 6 for nearly 50 machines that needs to be done in the next couple of weeks and for the sake of the school, I hope that it can all be done centrally and cleanly without every student getting some error or prompt when they next use Outlook.

The reboot is fine as the ICT teacher can do that, but I cannot see her going round and cleaning Outlook up for every student on every machine. Any my time of voluntary and I'm certainly not going to make a special trip to the school just to sort out something caused by two bugs in a so called business grade solution.

[studio_two]

My experience is that the Outlook 4.8 plug-in is actually cached on a per users basis. So its old presence needs to be deleted from every user profile on the machine.

After disabling the Avast 4.8 outlook add-in and closing Outlook, I rename extend.dat to extend.old_dat for every occurrence of it %localappdata%/microsoft/outlook (or presumably %appdata% in XP).

Thank you very much. That solved it for my installation.

Stephen