More problems installing the April Monthly Rollups if you have Avira antivirus

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Remember the ongoing problems with the six (now nine) Win7/8.1/Server patches and the five-or-so incompatible antivirus programs? Bluescreens, extreme
[See the full post at: More problems installing the April Monthly Rollups if you have Avira antivirus]

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abbodi86, Elly

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It’s entirely possible that the “block” could be coming from folks’ own computers, NOT Microsoft! It could be that in their dealings with MS about this scenario, the affected A/V vendors agreed with MS to set a certain value in a certain location within the registry when their patch was installed.

Background: I use AVG Free, but AVG is, I believe, owned by Avast. In reading Avast’s support article about their own part of this mess, they said that for the users of their Enterprise-level/Business-level products (for Avast-branded and AVG-branded products) that you cold tell that their fix had been applied to your computer by looking for a certain registry string in a certain location. Although the specifics of the support article dealt with Avast, I extrapolated a bit from their instructions (using AVG-branded product instead of Avast-branded product) and found the same string in the same location on both of my computers, even though I don’t use one of the affected business-level products from Avast/AVG.

Therefore, it’s entirely possible that Windows Update is looking for a certain string in the registry before it will offer up the April update for users of the affected companies’ software. And, in this, case, it’s entirely possible that the software hasn’t put the string in the registry due to some coding oversight in the patch’s development by Avira.

In other words, it’s patched, but they mistakenly forgot to “tell” Windows Update.

This has happened before, about a year ago with A/V vendors having to set a certain registry entry to certify that their product complied with a new MS edict for security.

BTW, I have installed all of Arpil’s patches on two computers Group A style, both having AVG Free, with no hiccups of any sort.

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@anonymous in post # 1578439:

Any possibility of getting a link to the Avast article you mentioned where they listed the registry string/location of the a patch to the registry where you can tell if their fix had been applied to a specific computer?

I have a couple of clients using AVG Free and who had trouble back in mid-April: I had to uninstall KB4493472 from both of them due to problems. I’m probably not going to let them try installing this update again until there is a fix for the problem.

I looked around the Avast web site, but did not see any prominent mention about the MS Updates problem and any Avast/AVG product.

Thanks in advance for any info on finding out what the registry entry might be.

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@SkipH –

Sorry for the long reply time, but work’s been really crazy the last several days. Here’s the link directly to the Avast site, but be warned: I can no longer see it with any browser ever since installing the May MS updates as recommended by @Woody. The cause is probably due to a lack of full support for HSTS on their site, as it’s based in the UK. See the story here on AskWoody.com’s main page. Ok, here’s the link, and I hope you can read it:
https://kb.support.business.avast.com/GetPublicArticle?title=Windows-machines-running-Avast-for-Business-and-Cloud-Care-Freezing-on-Start-up

Carefully read the part mentioning the registry keys for the special string. In place of the word “Avast” in the strings, use “AVG” instead, and you should get to the proper location. What I do remember is that I had the same string, but in the same location under the “AVG” heading instead of “Avast” heading, since I don’t have Avast.

If you go into their AVG installations and look at the version number listed in the “Menu” heading of “About” (with the little “i” symbol), if the version number is “19.4.3089 (build 19.4.4318.491)” or higher, you’re probably all set, no need to go digging around the registry. That’s the version number of my current AVG Free installation, and I had no problems with the April patches, installing them one at a time and rebooting in between each one.

I hope this helps and, again, sorry for the long wait in between messages!

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woody

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OUCH.

Supposedly the only links caught up in this inanity are ones that end in gov.uk.

Or maybe we have a bigger problem on our hands?

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Hey Woody, i can’t reach that link using an android tablet either. A miracle- something that isn’t Microsoft’s fault! 🙂

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My sincerest apologies, @Woody !

Since I hadn’t gone to the Avast page for a couple of weeks, I just assumed that, since the Avast page I linked to in my post just above was located in the UK, Avast had been affected by the HSTS snafu as well. Turns out they seem to have taken the page down without telling anyone, per @SkipH ‘s posts below, here and here.

If I could figure out how to do it, I’d gladly insert several emoticons or emojis of an egg or two hitting my face here. Bummer I can’t even insert an “embarrassed” emoji here, either! 🙁

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One last piece of advice for those with AVG Free reading this thread as a possible solution: If you don’t currently have the aforementioned special string in your registry, please don’t try inserting it manually, as that could cause some very unfortunate or unintended consequences for your system.

Edit: Please quote resource to support statement.

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W7 home. I installed security only for April on 5-4. I have Avira, no apparent problem.

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As of Saturday (5/11), when I tried to patch a Win7 machine, I still was not

offered the April security rollup via WU.  Avira had been updated and the

machine rebooted before beginning.

Here’s to hoping Tuesday starts a better month for MS patches on Avira machines.

Cheers.

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woody

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anonymous wrote:

As of Saturday (5/11), when I tried to patch a Win7 machine, I still was not

offered the April security rollup via WU.  Avira had been updated and the

machine rebooted before beginning.

Here’s to hoping Tuesday starts a better month for MS patches on Avira machines.

Cheers.

Windows 7 machine here with avira full updated too. I hided KB4493472 on april, and after unhiding it now, it does not show anymore.

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Win7 with Avira, since Defcon 4 was issued I have run the Windows Updater a few times (even tried with Avira disabled) and am still not getting the April rollup. Avira is fully up to date.

Some clarity from Avira and Microsoft would be good, staying tight lipped is not helping.

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I’m also running Windows 7 Pro (32 bit) and Avira Free Antivirus. My version of Avira updated to 15.0.45.1214 a few days ago and I’ve checked for updates daily since then. So far, the only Windows Update I’ve received is KB890830 (MSRT).

I intend to sit tight until KB4493472 appears in the Windows Update list. Alternatively, if I read postings here on AskWoody that it’s okay to manually install KB4493472, then I will follow suit, after first backing up my system.

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FYI  Avira has just updated again, to version 15.0.1905.1271. – still the April rollup hasn’t shown itself. Avira say they have fixed the problem and MS are now regarding the problem as mitigated, yet clearly for a lot of Avira users (including myself) it is not fixed. So who’s at fault here?…

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anonymous wrote:

still the April rollup hasn’t shown itself.

Why are you sticking with Avira after all the patches that still are blocked by Microsoft ?
Why not try another free anti-virus like : Kaspersky anti-virus free which doesn’t have any compatibility problems ?

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Win7  32bit with Avira Free – I have now installed the May rollup, and the .Net patch and  it all went o.k.  I can tentatively say that it seems any conflicts have been resolved. (Fingers crossed).

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@Anonymous in post 1661137, and Woody

Thanks for the info on AVG/Avast.

Unfortunately, I can’t see anything on the web page you linked to, on 3 computers running either Windows 7 or Windows 10, using the latest Chrome 74.0.3729.157 build, OR Internet Explorer 11, patched up to April’s cumulative update level.

When I right-click on the empty web page, and do a “View Page Source…”, all it shows is !DOCTYPE HTML and nothing else, so I’m assuming it is an “empty” web page.

If I right-click and select “Inspect”, there’s a couple of lines of code (/head, /body), but no other informational text.

I’ll try Google-ing for the text in the URL, see if it comes up on another Avast site somewhere in the world.

Thanks again and I’ll report back if I can find a human readable web page!

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@Anonymous in post 1661137

Doing some quick Google-ing for that phrase turned up the same empty web page, and another page dated 4-11-2019 saying “This announcement is no longer active”, referencing the link to the empty web page.

So I guess that page had vanished, maybe a look at the Internet WayBack (archive.org.web) can find a cached page.

Meanwhile, I’ll contact my 2 clients and have them check their AVG Free versions as you instructed, and see what version they have.

Thanks again.

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@Anonymous in post 1661137

WooHoo! Found the Avast web page using the WayBack Machine. Here’s the link to the web.archive.org web page:

WayBack Machine web page

The registry entry shown here plus a version number for AVG Free equal to or greater than what you posted, my clients should be OK to update, will probably skip to May’s updates ASAP.

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Great, you found the article! Now, just replace the “aswVmm” in the location instructions with “avgVmm” and you’ll find the right place to look for the string.

If the string is not there, I wouldn’t go putting it in there manually, as the emergency updater that probably put it in my registry may have also changed another setting elsewhere in the registry that makes the string work with Windows Update. Since we don’t know if that’s a fact (whether it made other changes to the registry or not), better off not messing with the registry manually in this case, as it could produce unintended consequences.

BTW, thanks for the background on your search for the “missing” page that I used myself just a couple of weeks ago. I had no idea that Avast had taken it down! After all, it’s still linked in the Microsoft support article for the April rollup for Windows 7!

The fact that they took the page down to nothing but a blank page made me think they’d somehow gotten caught up in the latest snafu affecting British government sites with a lack of HSTS support.

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At Anonymouse in post# 1678479:

I went to a customer’s place who was using AVG Free the other day to try to put on May’s cumulative update (skipping April’s)

I checked the version of AVG free, it was 19.4.3089 (build 19.4.4318.491), so that looked OK. AVG Free wanted another update, so I put that on, forget what version # it raised it to.

Then checked in the Registry for the entry that was supposed to be there and it it was, with “avgVmm” replacing “aswVmm”.

I went ahead and manually installed KB4499164, rebooted, and the system came back up normally, but with a 2nd re-boot midway through the process.

So, I’d like to thank you for posting the info about the version numbers of AVG Free/Avira and the tip on where the Avira web page was supposed to be, and glad that The WayBack Machine coughed up a copy of the web page with the info on it.

I think my other customer is out of town (and is on Windows 8.1), so I’ll get to him later at some point.

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