Avg won't install on Vista - error on start avgrssvc.exe
techAdmin
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I came across this while helping a friend get his Vista setup.

Error is this:
:: Code ::
cant start the resdident shield ie: avgrssvc.exe


After a bit of googling, I found the problem, luckily on the AVG forums

:: Quote ::
It is necessary to run Windows Update BEFORE installing AVG Free on a Vista machine. Without the necessary updates, AVG will not update properly. If you run Windows Updates after installing AVG, the Resident Shield Service will sometimes refuse to initialize.

If you have already installed AVG and are having problems on a machine running Vista, uninstall AVG and run Windows updates. Make sure you run ALL available updates, not just the high-priority updates. Then re-install AVG.

Also it is recommended to uninstall AVG Free from your pc before the upgrading to Windows Vista. Have a look @ FAQ 668 [free.grisoft.com]....

When you re-install AVG don't forget to follow this procedure.... Vista has a new security model that means even the admin users do not really run programs with full admin rights. This means that during normal installs and uninstalls you need to take an additional step so the programs can install properly. The only difference is that when you run the install programs you right click on the program and select "Run as administrator" ... after that then just running them like you do normally is all that is used ... its only during the install or uninstall that you take this extra step. We know it sounds odd that you have to be a computer administrator and also select the additional option, but that is part of it now.


This worked, I updated the machine, which had a few updates waiting, but I don't think that was the actual solution, I think it was simply doing as above:

  • Download AVG free version
  • Right click on the installer file, select 'run as administrator'
  • The install should now complete, but be warned, Vista runs like total molassis, incredibly slow, so it takes a while for all the parts to complete. Proceed as normal to update definitions, and run the scan.

And that's about it.

The same goes for the free AVG rootkit checker, which is always worth checking out as well.
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techAdmin
Status: Site Admin
Joined: 26 Sep 2003
Posts: 4124
Location: East Coast, West Coast? I know it's one of them.
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Update: however, on reboot, AVG would not start, with this Vista error message:

:: Code ::
AVG basic interface has stopped working


I assume this is a permissions problem, let's see... yes, if I then try to manually restart AVG as administrator, it runs fine.

So the question is, how to make avg start with admin rights.

This question came up as well in the AVG forums, but sadly, no solution is ever given in these threads.

This would in my opinion constitute a pretty serious issue for AVG, if normal users can't even get AVG installed on Vista, that's a pretty major issue, and it certainly was not effectively handled in the AVG user forums in my opinion, I can see that most users when faced with problems like this will just give up and move to some other AV program that does install without headaches.

This is probably not AVG's problem purely, but they have failed, I assume because of the core methods avg uses cause non trivial issues when running in the vista UAC [user access control]system.

Things you'll need to try after this fails is logging in as true system administror in vista.

:: Quote ::
You won't find the Administrator account in the User Accounts Control Panel. But the MMC-based Computer Management section of the Administrative Tools Control Panel does give you access to the Administrator account. By default, the account is disabled, but you can enable it there. Your obvious conclusion might be that all you need to do is enable the Administrator account, restart Windows and then log into the Administrator account. But that doesn't work. There's an added step that Microsoft hasn't documented and that isn't all that intuitive: Not only do you have to enable the Administrator account, you also have to disable all other accounts with computer-administrator privileges. And since Vista's clean-install setup program forces you to create a new user account with computer administrator privileges, everyone has to cross this hurdle in finding the built-in Administrator.

Once this is done, supposedly you can then login as admin, install avg, after uninstalling it first, install as admin, and then supposedly it will start correctly.

I'll keep you posted.
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