Microsoft has started rolling out the Windows 10 April 2018 update, also known as version 1803, but some users who have Avast Antivirus installed on their PCs are running into problems setting it up.

There's a fix now, though.

The Solution

Avast has provided step-by-step instructions on how to fix the issue, and all users need are a USB flash drive with at least 8 GB of capacity and a working computer.

To give credit where credit is due, the folks over at The Computer Cellar, a computer repair shop, first made the guide on how to fix the issue so that affected users won't have to completely reinstall Windows when they're at the point of no return. However, there's a risk of losing data using the method.

How To Install The Update And Keep Avast

According to Hot Hardware, one solution is to just uninstall Avast, install the update, and reinstall Avast after everything is back in working order. The thing is, the method is a little inconvenient, and it's just a work-around, but users have reported to have had success with it. As for those worried about protection, Windows 10's built-in antivirus program Windows Defender will turn on automatically after Avast has been removed.

A Look At The Issue

Now the problem was big enough to draw the attention of both Microsoft and Avast. As a result, the former had to block the update on computers running the latter's antivirus software.

Numerous users at Reddit have reported having trouble in installing the update on their PCs with Avast. The poster of the thread, who appears to be from The Computer Cellar, says that when a user restarts to install the update, they'll boot to a blue screen that asks them to choose a keyboard language. After that, they have a few options to choose from, one of which reads, "boot from another operating system." Clicking on that will direct the user to another blue screen with three options: "Windows Rollback" and two "Windows 10 on Volume [X]" — just to be clear, the two out of the three choices are indeed identical. The first option will restart the computer, while the other two will boot Windows with a blank desktop, missing icons, and an error message that says the Desktop file could not be accessed.

Now this is just one of the two relatively widespread problems that's plaguing the rollout of Windows 10 April 2018 update. The other one involves bricking PCs equipped with either an Intel SSD 600p or SSD Pro 6000 series.