Win 10 PC started repeatedly refreshing taskbar (once every second or so) after re-installing AVG

On a Windows 10 PC, after reinstalling AVG Free which had been uninstalled
(see below for the history leading up to this), the installation (which
seemed to go according to plan) asked for the PC to be rebooted - as
expected. But when it booted up it started displaying the large white text
on a blue background that you see on a brand new PC when it is about to ask
for name of user etc as it is personalised - messages such as "Hi",
"Preparing PC", "PC will be ready soon" etc. Eventually these finished and
the PC rebooted. Ever since then it has booted to a desktop but after a few
seconds the taskbar starts refreshing about once every second and the Start
button has no effect. It is still possible to Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up task
manager and I can start a new Explorer process to access the file system. I
can also see that a Windows Module Installer process is using about 50% of
the CPU. Killing that process has no effect because it gets restarted. I
tried removing AVG again, which worked but did not solve the problem. I
can't see anything that is being auto-started that could cause the problem.
One intriguing thing was that although there was an
HKLM/Software/Windows/Current Version/Run folder in Regedit, there wasn't
corresponding one in HKCU: Software/Windows/Current Version existed but
there was no Run folder and therefore nothing within it.

I don't have much confidence that restore points will work. When I tried to
restore the PC to an earlier state to sort out another problem (see below)
it spent a long time "Initialising" and then "Restoring Registry", but after
rebooting it displayed a message "Cannot restore to this restore point - no
changes have been made".

Any suggestions for things to try?



History leading up to this problem

I was asked to look at a Windows 10 PC which had just started having
problems with Outlook (ie the business email program that is part of
Office). It was giving the dreaded "Not implemented" error when the user
tried a send/receive; it also affected the Tools | Account Settings and the
File | Data File Management menus. The user had uninstalled AutoCad, but
Outlook had worked fine after that, then failed the following day. Having
looked up the error in Google he had uninstalled AVG Free, having
misunderstood instructions to disable the email-scanning feature in whatever
AV was installed.

After eliminating the two most common causes of this (delete the .srs file
to let it be re-created, and run scanpst to repair any errors in the PST
file) it looked as if Outlook would need to be reinstalled, it looked as if
Outlook would need to be reinstalled. A "Change" operation on the Office
package in Programs and Features failed with a vague message, so a reinstall
from CD seemed to be necessary - but he couldn't find the Office CD.

So I tried to restore the PC to an earlier restore point just before he had
removed AutoCAD. This appeared to proceed OK, but when the PC eventually
booted back up after it had supposedly restored the earlier registry, there
was a message that the restoration had failed and no changed had been made.
The same thing happened with an earlier restore point.

When I then tried to reinstall AVG Free that the customer had mistakenly
removed, the problems with the "Preparing PC" messages and the constant
refreshing of the taskbar began.



All in all, a frustrating experience. I think a lot of it stems from a
fairly innocuous reinstallation of AVG causing the PC to go through what
looked like an upgrade to Windows (all those messages of the form that you
get with a brand new SYSPREPped PC), and that may have left the PC in a
dodgy state afterwards, even though it appeared to complete successfully.
When I was able to run Control Panel from Task Manager, I looked in the
System applet and the reported version of Windows was still "Windows 10", as
opposed to "Windows Anniversary Edition" or "Windows 10 Creator's Edition"
and the copyright date was still 2016, suggesting that the PC hadn't updated
itself.


Help!!!!!!!!!!!!

NY wrote:

snips

I don't have much confidence that restore points will work. When I tried
to restore the PC to an earlier state to sort out another problem (see
below) it spent a long time "Initialising" and then "Restoring
Registry", but after rebooting it displayed a message "Cannot restore to
this restore point - no changes have been made".

Any suggestions for things to try?

Restore points don't typically work, if there is malware.

The "cannot restore" message could happen, if more than one
restore point is needed to restore to that point in time,
and one of the restore points in the sequence is damaged
or missing.

*******

Malware cleanup experts, the first thing they do, is erase
all the restore points, so if all the restore points are
infected, there is no chance of actually using the
restore points and re-infecting the computer.

*******

You can run "winver" to get the release and patchlevel of the OS.
And from that, determine if you're running the Anniversary Edition,
the Creator Edition, and whether a Repair/Upgrade install will
help.

*******

You have your backup of C: to return to, right ?
Even if it's three months old, it's better than nothing.

*******

http://www.avg.com/ca-en/utilities

"AVG Remover eliminates all the parts of your AVG installation
from your computer, including registry items, installation files,
user files, etc. AVG Remover is the last option to be used in
case the AVG uninstall / repair installation process has
failed repeatedly."

AVG Remover
(AVG_Remover.exe) exe March 1, 2017 7 MB

You'd go to Programs and Features, and remove AVG from there.
Then run the AVG_Remover.exe after that. Some other products
use the same approach, and support a removal tool.

I would look for more third-party references to AVG_Remover.exe
first, to see if it's a "worthy" application, and whether
there is a "best practice" or "order" to using it.

Typical AV products, leave a couple services or background
things running, even though the program no longer has a user
interface. The purpose of a "removal" tool, is to get
rid of those.

*******

If the desktop screen still appears, you could run "Setup.exe"
off the latest downloaded Microsoft Windows 10 installer DvD.
And do a repair install.

The Windows 10 installer has an extensive "Migration" procedure.
I cannot predict what it's going to do with some half-assed
left over AVG services, screwing up the works. If you're lucky,
they're not copied over, and the resulting OS may be a bit
more stable. You should do your best to run AVG_Remover.exe
before trying the Repair install. Modern Windows can only
be repaired, from the running desktop. Back in WinXP
days, the OS could be dead on your bench, and you could
boot the CD and Repair install from there. Whereas on an
OS like Windows 10, Repair Install is only allowed from a
working desktop. And since a user is normally in deep deep
trouble when "Repair Install" comes to mind, this is a
ridiculous requirement.

With Win10 running, open the DVD in File Explorer and locate
Setup.exe. You run that, to kick off a Repair/Upgrade install.
If the DVD is "too old", the installer will tell you "a newer
version of the OS is already on the disk drive".

When I do that kind of work, I usually drop the system to
just the one disk drive. I disconnect data and power cables
from all the data drives, before Repair Installing. Even though
the odds of the installer making changes to the other disks
is "almost zero", I try not to take chances.

If you've downloaded the latest Win10 as an ISO9660 file,
simply right-clicking that and selecting "mount", gives you
a virtual DVD drive. A Repair Install can be done from such
a virtual drive - the reason this works, is all the files
are copied while the image is mounted, and on the reboot,
the mount is lost. The installation uses the files it's got,
to complete the Repair Install operation. Of course, burning
the DVD does give you emergency boot materials, which come in
handy for "offline" DISM or SFC repairs, or even CHKDSK of C: .

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:

snips

I don't have much confidence that restore points will work. When I tried
to restore the PC to an earlier state to sort out another problem (see
below) it spent a long time "Initialising" and then "Restoring Registry",
but after rebooting it displayed a message "Cannot restore to this
restore point - no changes have been made".

Any suggestions for things to try?

Restore points don't typically work, if there is malware.

The "cannot restore" message could happen, if more than one
restore point is needed to restore to that point in time,
and one of the restore points in the sequence is damaged
or missing.

Ah, I didn't know that restore points were cumulative and incremental. I
thought that each one was self-contained.

You have your backup of C: to return to, right ?
Even if it's three months old, it's better than nothing.

No, the owner of the PC hasn't taken any backups. It's one of the issues I
was going to raise with him - at least backing up Documents, PIctures,
Music, Videos, Desktop (in case he's stored any files there rather than
using shortcuts!).


http://www.avg.com/ca-en/utilities

"AVG Remover eliminates all the parts of your AVG installation
from your computer, including registry items, installation files,
user files, etc. AVG Remover is the last option to be used in
case the AVG uninstall / repair installation process has
failed repeatedly."

AVG Remover
(AVG_Remover.exe) exe March 1, 2017 7 MB

You'd go to Programs and Features, and remove AVG from there.
Then run the AVG_Remover.exe after that. Some other products
use the same approach, and support a removal tool.

I'll try that. It's one of the things I'd have tried yesterday if we hadn't
run out of time.


If the desktop screen still appears, you could run "Setup.exe"
off the latest downloaded Microsoft Windows 10 installer DvD.
And do a repair install.

The desktop itself doesn't appear, but I can bring up Task Manager with
Ctrl-Alt-Del so I can run new processes such as CMD, Explorer etc, and hence
could run from a DVD.

The Windows 10 installer has an extensive "Migration" procedure.
I cannot predict what it's going to do with some half-assed
left over AVG services, screwing up the works. If you're lucky,
they're not copied over, and the resulting OS may be a bit
more stable. You should do your best to run AVG_Remover.exe
before trying the Repair install. Modern Windows can only
be repaired, from the running desktop. Back in WinXP
days, the OS could be dead on your bench, and you could
boot the CD and Repair install from there. Whereas on an
OS like Windows 10, Repair Install is only allowed from a
working desktop. And since a user is normally in deep deep
trouble when "Repair Install" comes to mind, this is a
ridiculous requirement.

With Win10 running, open the DVD in File Explorer and locate
Setup.exe. You run that, to kick off a Repair/Upgrade install.
If the DVD is "too old", the installer will tell you "a newer
version of the OS is already on the disk drive".

When I do that kind of work, I usually drop the system to
just the one disk drive. I disconnect data and power cables
from all the data drives, before Repair Installing. Even though
the odds of the installer making changes to the other disks
is "almost zero", I try not to take chances.

Yes, I'm a great fan of "keep things as simple as possible".

If you've downloaded the latest Win10 as an ISO9660 file,
simply right-clicking that and selecting "mount", gives you
a virtual DVD drive. A Repair Install can be done from such
a virtual drive - the reason this works, is all the files
are copied while the image is mounted, and on the reboot,
the mount is lost. The installation uses the files it's got,
to complete the Repair Install operation. Of course, burning
the DVD does give you emergency boot materials, which come in
handy for "offline" DISM or SFC repairs, or even CHKDSK of C: .


Have you seen an upgrade from an older version of Windows to
Anniversary/Creator's edition? Does it tend to display inane "Hi", "We'll be
back soon" etc messages in a large white font on a royal blue background -
the same appearance as when a brand new PC is started for the first time and
it's about to ask for regionalisation and user name info, before booting to
the desktop for the very first time?

I'm a bit concerned that when the desktop *did* appear successfully (even if
it was only for about 5 seconds before the taskbar started flashing and
refreshing) the icons that had been pinned to the taskbar had disappeared
and the clock had reverted to US "MM/DD/YYYY" format instead of the UK "DD
MMM YYYY" format - I hope it hadn't created a new user and ditched the old
one...

It's intriguing that it took an installation of an AV product to trigger the
upgrade to a new version of Windows (if that's what it was) when I'd
rebooted the PC a couple of times earlier on and it hadn't mentioned the
existence of updates that were pending.


The whole day was a case of going from bad to worse: initially the PC was
fine apart from Outlook not working, then Windows Update wouldn't let me
restore to a time before the Outlook fault had occurred (and before the user
had misguidedly uninstalled AVG), then all hell broke loose when I
reinstalled AVG.


When I reinstall Windows 10, what happens about licensing? I think the PC
may have originally been supplied with Windows 8, so any licence sticker
will have a Win 8 key. Evidently at some point it was upgraded to Win 10
during the time that upgrades were free. Does the upgrade process also
update the restore partition so when you invoke a Restore to Factory
Settings you get Win 10? Is there a chance that during any Restore to
Factory Settings I will be asked for a licence key (for Win 10, rather than
Win 8)?

In article ,
says...

"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:

snips

I don't have much confidence that restore points will work. When I tried
to restore the PC to an earlier state to sort out another problem (see
below) it spent a long time "Initialising" and then "Restoring Registry",
but after rebooting it displayed a message "Cannot restore to this
restore point - no changes have been made".

Any suggestions for things to try?

Restore points don't typically work, if there is malware.

The "cannot restore" message could happen, if more than one
restore point is needed to restore to that point in time,
and one of the restore points in the sequence is damaged
or missing.

Ah, I didn't know that restore points were cumulative and incremental. I
thought that each one was self-contained.

You have your backup of C: to return to, right ?
Even if it's three months old, it's better than nothing.

No, the owner of the PC hasn't taken any backups. It's one of the issues I
was going to raise with him - at least backing up Documents, PIctures,
Music, Videos, Desktop (in case he's stored any files there rather than
using shortcuts!).


http://www.avg.com/ca-en/utilities

"AVG Remover eliminates all the parts of your AVG installation
from your computer, including registry items, installation files,
user files, etc. AVG Remover is the last option to be used in
case the AVG uninstall / repair installation process has
failed repeatedly."

AVG Remover
(AVG_Remover.exe) exe March 1, 2017 7 MB

You'd go to Programs and Features, and remove AVG from there.
Then run the AVG_Remover.exe after that. Some other products
use the same approach, and support a removal tool.

I'll try that. It's one of the things I'd have tried yesterday if we hadn't

Factory restore will do just that. Won't likely even require entering
any key as every time I've done it the key seems "hardwired" into the
image already. If it does want a key it'll want the one on the sticker.