Active Virus Shield "Update Failed: Incorrect Signature" Fix
AOL’s decision to dump Kaspersky for McAfee was not accepted very well by the tech community. There was no official Vista-compatible version of Active Virus Shield (AVS) released before the switch had been made, but I had assumed that they would continue to provide support for at least the next few months for the XP version.
That turned out to not be the case as several readers have reported to me that as of last week they were receiving an "Update failed: Incorrect signature" error (the corresponding error codes were 0×8000005C and 0×8000005A). Netster007x was the first to notify me of the issue, and after looking around I began to think that the issue lied in the update server.
I managed to find a Google Group that had several other people complaining about the same error message in Active Virus Shield. One eagle-eyed commenter noticed that you could bypass the problem by removing the two AOL entries from the list of update servers. Here’s the quick how-to on doing that:
- Right-click on the Active Virus Shield System Tray icon and close the program. Alternatively you could boot your computer into Safe Mode.
- Open this file:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\AVP6\Data\aol-updcfg.xml - Remove the top two lines from the file:
<site2 url="ftp://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/" diff_url="diffs" weight="10000001" region="*" />
<site2 url="http://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/" diff_url="diffs" weight="10000000" region="*" /> - Save the changes and restart Active Virus Shield (or restart your computer).
Now your Active Virus Shield should be back to normal, and updating regularly. Of course support for this application is extremely limited now that AOL isn’t using it anymore, but the last version is still available for download on sites like Softpedia, MajorGeeks, and CNet.
So it looks like there is a workaround for the time being, and for some of you it will be worth it since Kaspersky (which powers Active Virus Shield) is ranked as one of the best antivirus solutions. Although I prefer to just use the always free Avast! or AVG.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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Tags: Freeware, Software, Antivirus, AOL, Downloads, Settings
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shame…After this start happening I just assumed that aol had finally dropped it, and just switched back to avast… Oh well.
I think they essentially did drop it, but by editing that file you tell the app to check Kaspersky for the updates from now on.
Hi,
While this change works as soon as you update AVS from a Kaspersky server the
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\AVP6\Data\aol-updcfg.xml
file will be replaced with a copy from the download server which contains the AOL download servers once again.
Adding download.newaol.com to your hosts. file pointing to 127.0.0.1 file seems to be the only way to get updates at this time.
Kind Regards
Simon
Thanks for the update Simon, but my friend who tried it out interestingly enough didn’t have that problem.
My Active virus shield is working very well on my windows 2000 machine. Dont know whether i can expect this sorta problem in the future.Guess i will be reverting back to avira antivir.
Without doing anything, the program updated on its own this evening!
I was thinking of getting a new anti-vir program, but magically, things seem back to normal O__O
AOL got many complaints or something? XD
That’s good news! I’m sure Kaspersky had a little something to do with it since they would be getting hit harder by update requests from people modifying their configuration with the instructions I posted.
If you want to avoid overwrite of the aol-updcfg.xml just set permissions “deny write” on the file.
forget avs…forget avast…just try nod32 once and you will never try another anti virus software…
I’ve used the NOD32 trial before, but that’s not exactly free. I love not having to worry about licenses.
Help!
As of this past Monday (09/24/07) I can no longer even find the system tray icon for Active Virus Shield to see if it’s even working or updating or anything. Windows Security Center still shows AVS as my AV program but even when I click on the desktop icon the program won’t open. Does anyone know what gives? Is it the end of days and I just need to remove it and move on with my life?
That sounds like a problem with your system, and not with the application. Have you checked your running applications to see if it is still going (Ctrl+Alt+Del)?
Ryan, I did the Task Manager and nothing is there. I looked at both the Applications & Processes tabs. So this makes me think it is not active.
I tried using the option you gave of going into the Application Data file to delete those two lines. But when I try to open the folder, aol-updcfg.xml, this is what I get:
**********
The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.
——————————————————————————–
An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource ‘file:///C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Appl…
; 0XLSznpdI71fB300e7Uwj1ycQIMmwEfn37L3d+IdBWI3ajs4JVJkE36hAa
*********
So where could I go from here?
You’ll want to open that file in Notepad or some text editor to do the changes. You should try running the program manually, either with a shortcut in the Start Menu or by hunting down the executable file in the Program Files folder.
OK, so after that problem, the updating problem solved itself. The app continued to run fine until today, 1/28/08.
I start up my PC and an info bubble tells me I need to re-activate/license the product. When I open the Active Virus Shield (Kapersky) window, it tells “Attention!: Product license expires in 13 days. When the license expires, updates will be disabled.” It gives a link to [License renewal]. That link directs here…
[activevirusshield.com]?
W/ the link to the explaining website, and official activation key message, not just a simple glitch error, it looks like sadly this free pro antivirus deal has faded away.
I’m tempted to just chance it w/ out of date virus definitions, but I probably should bother to uninstall then install Avast free.
I would just switch over to Avast then, it’s not worth taking the risk of running outdated definitions.