Avast Antivirus to discontinue new versions, but still supporting Windows XP

[FranceBB]

AVG and Avast share the same core, but they have a different front-end ever since Avast bought AVG. I'm speechless, 'cause the UI used by Avast is just a C++ front-end compiled with SSE2 assembly optimisations targeting XP as well and it shouldn't have anything fancy inside. It should be slow-ish (on some systems) and not scalable (which makes it difficult to use on low res systems) but it shouldn't break. Besides, even if the UI doesn't work for whatever reason, the core and the protection engine should as they take the configuration from the configuration files and only the final integrity check should misbehave. In other words, the worst case scenario I was thinking about is the UI process using up all your resources trying to load itself up.

The worst thing is that I can't reproduce it neither on my computer nor on a VM.

Do you have Skype? Can you add me? (francebb1 - franceopf@gmail.com).

On one hand, I'd like to find out more about the issue in order to solve it once and for all, on the other, since I no longer have any affiliation with Avast and AVG shares its protection engine, I would tell you: "if it works, leave it as it is".

It's up to you; if you are willing to test a few other things (unofficially), add me on Skype and I'll add you to our group chat. (Dibya, Peter, Samuel... we are all there).

[dencorso]

3 minutes ago, FranceBB said:

I would tell you: "if it works, leave it as it is"

Sage words.

[Dave-H]

Unfortunately "it works" is only relative here!
Yes, the services run, and it appears to be OK, but it's still crawlingly slow to start up, I'm getting a Windows log error on every boot -

"Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the AVG Antivirus service."

This is causing the system to start really slowly.
Also there are two boot services not running "avgbidsh" and "avgbuniv".
This is exactly the same behaviour as from their Avast equivalents.
They run fine on the first install, but won't run on subsequent boots.
I found that they will run if their start type is changed from 0 (boot) to 1 (system)!

Also the system shutdown is extremely slow, as the main service is not releasing the registry.
Using the User Profile Hive Cleanup service (UPHClean) makes no difference as of course when it tries to close the handles "access is denied"!

So, I don't know what to do now.
A fully working security suite that works on XP and doesn't cripple my system seems to be as elusive as ever!
The problem is that nobody seems to be able to reproduce the problems I'm having, which is a complete mystery.

Thanks for your offer of trying to help me further @FranceBB, I may well take you up on that!
I have one last thing to try first though, and that's Malwarebytes, which still has a legacy version for XP.

I'll let you know if that works!

[bluebolt]

4 hours ago, Dave-H said:

So, I don't know what to do now.
A fully working security suite that works on XP and doesn't cripple my system seems to be as elusive as ever!
...

I have one last thing to try first though, and that's Malwarebytes, which still has a legacy version for XP.

You could consider Bitdefender's free edition, which has worked perfectly here for some time now.  The closest thing to a problem I've had with it was a year or two ago when notices popped up at every boot about their imminent dropping of XP support; but eventually those nags stopped.

Edited December 27, 2018 by bluebolt

[Dave-H]

Thanks, I'll check that out.
At the moment, Malwarebytes is looking very promising.
I've installed the trial version, and it seems to work fine, after a few hiccoughs, and doesn't impact on the start up and closedown time of the machine as far as I can see.
Unfortunately, the free version does not have realtime scanning, so I will have to pay for it, but that's not a problem.
I'll see how it goes until the trial period expires and decide then.

[Dave-H]

Well, I've now got a problem with Malwarebytes!
After working fine apparently for a day, now one of the services is failing to run, and reinstalling doesn't fix it, in fact it doesn't even seem to be being installed any more!
I'm beginning to think that my system just doesn't like security software!

[dencorso]

All your system's partitions are visible from each other, right? Run MBAM3 from Win 10 on the whole machine. Or do it from a bootable MBAM3 CD/DVD if that's possible. In case nothing wrong is found, then we may proceed troubleshooting. What d'you say?

[Mathwiz]

@dencorso, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe @Dave-H's PC has some kind of malware that's "securing" it from security software

[Dave-H]

I certainly hope not!
I've not seen any evidence of that.
Anyway, the Malwarebytes community seem to be all very helpful, and I hope the issue I've got with that (the anti-exploit service won't switch on) will be speedily resolved.
If it is, I will probably stick with that.

[Mathwiz]

I hope not too; and it's probably not the case. (Just about every time I thought I might have malware on my PC, it turned out I didn't.) But if nothing else works, don't rule the possibility out.

[Tangy]

I wonder if you can help me. Few days ago I upgraded my avast to version 18.8.2356 from 18.6.2349 I felt compelled to do so since a critical vulnerability had been fixed in this version.. The day after I noticed that Behaviour Shield behaved erratically by turning off specially on start up. I did a repair but to no avail. Then I set aswbIDSAgent to automatic in services this worked for a day or two. Then I tried to do a clean install . During uninstallation right at the end Avast got stuck to : Deleting file C:\ documents and settings\all users\ application data\avast software\avast\html data\image 001.png  and winlogon was consuming almost 100% of cpu . After a forced reboot to my surprise avast had been removed from my computer.
Could not use avastclear utility please see attached image 3. I installed avast but the symptom regarding B Shield persists. I did that quite a few times but the BS problem is still there. Also now when I start my computer Please see Image 1 of course as soon as everything is loaded it goes away. Once I set adwbIDSAgent to automatic and perform a repair BS turning off  occurs mostly at start up. Once I turn it on manually it stays on till the end of the day well not always. If I turn on BS from protection menu instead of main GUI never turns off. Same thing happens when I try to uninstal in safe mode.

I was considering the idea to delete html data from application data folder then use revo and do a thorough uninstall of avast or uninstall it from add/remove forced reboot and then delete avast application data folder and then install again. I found an off line installer of the version I was using but there is no way to install it due to winlogon high cpu consumption. I guess you can't use off line installers for winxp.

Thank you kindly

PS : I posted that over the avast forum but nobody really has bothered to help me so far

Any ideas @FranceBB

Edited January 9, 2019 by Tangy
info

[Tangy]

It seems this is the main culprit,tried to delete htmldata got a message saying access denied, blocked html cannot be removed 

[Tangy]

Ok problem solved. How ? please do not ask is beyond me. The only thing I still get that blank thing depicted in image 2

but as soon as avast is fully loaded it goes with the wind.

[Mcinwwl]

If noone (even @FranceBB ) knows, then I'm afraid we cannot help you Unfortunately, Avast on my XP just works, so I don't have any experience in this matter.

[Dave-H]

I've decided to give up with Avast.
They've just released a new version of the offline installer for 18.8, which is supposed to have fixed the problems seen on some XP systems.
Of course when I tried it there was no difference at all, the main service still will not run.
The guy at support says that's it, there will be no more versions of 18, so that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
Such a shame as I would dearly liked to have found out what the problem was!
The latest version of AVG does work, in that at least its main service will run, but still has problems with other services not running as they should.
I'm using Malwarebytes Premium at the moment, which has an issue with one of its services, which won't start as a boot service, but generally works fine.
The general feeling with the Avast and Malwarebytes support people is that at least in my case the problems may well be simply because my machine is so non-standard.
In fact the Malwarebytes guy said that he wasn't even sure that Malwarebytes had ever been tested on a dual processor machine with a server motherboard!
The fact that my machine is multi-boot with non-standard paths in the OS installation may be a factor too.
Anyway, I'll stick with Malwarebytes for now, it is working and apparently doing its job!