I'm running Vista 64 home premium. The missus told me earlier that she was getting an error message. I took a look and Windows Security centre was giving 2 strange messages.
1. Avast is not properly registered with Windows (or something like that)
2. UAC has been turned on, reboot machine to effect the change.
I've been running avast for years with no issues, and I switched off UAC 2 years ago via the registry. Anyway, I rebooted the machine. On boot up, I got the same message about Avast. When i looked at my desktop, I could see that around 75% of my shortcuts were invalid. For example, when I clicked on the Outlook shortcut it went into the installtion wizard and failed, clicking on my Steam shorcut led to an invalid location error. I got a similar view in my program list. The whole machine looked completely borked.
I navigated to the Program files directory where it said I didn't have permissions to open the folder. I right clicked and went to properties, where the green bar went across the top of the window as if the PC was scanning for data, but it seemed to crash and didn't open the properties box.
I'm now getting a bit concerned, so I reboot. On reboot, all the shortcuts on my desktop appear ok, and work. UAC is clearly on, and annoying the pants off me. Still got the error with avast, so i download windows Security Essentials (use it on the wifes netbook so I know it's ok), uninstall avast and install MS Security essentials.
No problems everthing seems fine except for the UAC thing (will sort that another time).
The only change made today was the installation of a Windows Media Player security update for Sky Player.
WTF has happened here ? Anyone have any ideas ?
It has reminded me though that I need to back up my OS drive, last one was nearly 2 months ago.
1. Avast is not properly registered with Windows (or something like that)
2. UAC has been turned on, reboot machine to effect the change.
I've been running avast for years with no issues, and I switched off UAC 2 years ago via the registry. Anyway, I rebooted the machine. On boot up, I got the same message about Avast. When i looked at my desktop, I could see that around 75% of my shortcuts were invalid. For example, when I clicked on the Outlook shortcut it went into the installtion wizard and failed, clicking on my Steam shorcut led to an invalid location error. I got a similar view in my program list. The whole machine looked completely borked.
I navigated to the Program files directory where it said I didn't have permissions to open the folder. I right clicked and went to properties, where the green bar went across the top of the window as if the PC was scanning for data, but it seemed to crash and didn't open the properties box.
I'm now getting a bit concerned, so I reboot. On reboot, all the shortcuts on my desktop appear ok, and work. UAC is clearly on, and annoying the pants off me. Still got the error with avast, so i download windows Security Essentials (use it on the wifes netbook so I know it's ok), uninstall avast and install MS Security essentials.
No problems everthing seems fine except for the UAC thing (will sort that another time).
The only change made today was the installation of a Windows Media Player security update for Sky Player.
WTF has happened here ? Anyone have any ideas ?
It has reminded me though that I need to back up my OS drive, last one was nearly 2 months ago.
