Recent changes to Avast included the CyberCapture feature which paired with their cloud based analysis engine analyzes “rare” or “unique” executables prior to allowing them to be executed on your Windows computer. Unfortunately, this can interfere with the timing of initialization of such executables in unpredictable ways on differing hardware. The installer executable for Logger Pro seems to be one of the programs that is sensitive to these initialization issues.

Symptoms appear to include:

  • Logger Pro installer taking an excessively long time to start execution.
  • Logger Pro installer hangs (never starts execution)
  • Logger Pro throws an initialization error “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142), Click OK to close the application”
  • Logger Pro installer seems to start and then simply disappears.
  • Logger Pro installer is erroneously flagged as carrying malware or virus.

Logger Pro installer does not contain a virus. Every Logger Pro installer (originating from Vernier sources) is scanned prior to release for malware. Other antivirus products do not seem to have this issue (including AVG which also uses an implementation of CyberCapture).

Possible workarounds

  • Computer restart and retry. Can eliminate some timing related issues.
  • Temporarily turning the CyberCapture feature off in Avast and rebooting. Sometimes an additional reboot on certain hardware may be required.
  • Temporarily turning Avast off and retrying the install. (rebooting may be required)
  • Using a different antivirus program.

This problem first started appearing on computers running Avast in the Fall of 2020. The latest instance of known occurrence was in February 2021.

Published: February 18, 2021. Updated: February 22, 2021.