Avast Pro Locks PC when saving files

[markc99]

I have a customer, whom I'm trying Avast Pro 4.7 on their PC's to eventually upgrade them to the corporate version.  However, when they have Avast running in the background, and they attempt to save a file to their My Documents folder, the PC becomes unresponsive.  I know it is Avast causing the problems because when they disable the real-time scan, the problem doesn't happen.

Please help fix this problem, as I've always loved using Avast, and always refer my customers to use it as well.

Thanks,
Mark C

[igor]

Well, some more information might help. For example:
- what operating system is that?
- what application is the file saved from? What's the full path and filename (of the saved document)?
- does it help just to pause the corresponding resident provider (Standard Shield, I guess?), instead of stopping it?
- what's the sensitivity of Standard Shield - high or normal?
- how exactly does the PC becomes unresponsive? Is even the mouse pointer frozen, or only the running application? (or it's possible to switch to some applications and work with them?) Does the avast! tray icon spin to indicate it's scanning something?

[markc99]

It's Windows XP Pro SP2. 

They are trying to save files they opened in Microsoft Word and Excel back to their My Documents folder on the local drive. 

To test whether avast was the culprit, I had them right click on the tray icon, and click "Stop On-Access Protection", so I haven't tried just pausing the provider. 

I'm sure the sensitivity is set to normal, because I didn't change it, and that is the default value.

The application itself locks up.  The mouse still moves, but they are unable to minimize the application, and trying to open another application doesn't seem to work.

(I'm hearing all this information from the customer, and I haven't investigated it myself.  I did talk to them on the phone and asked a bunch of questions, but I thought that would be relevant also.  Especially in the case of the level of "unresponsiveness" of the PC.)

I hope this helps..

[mauserme]

Similar problems here.

I first posted problems about installing Windows Updates in this thread

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23775.15

but I find it goes beyond just that. 

Working on a 64 bit XP Pro SP2 box running as a RAID 5 server I've observed

-- Parity needs to be rebuilt with almost every boot
-- Cannot reliably write to disk as a local user, but writes seem OK for networked users
-- Even things as simple as creating a desktop folder hang (the computer continues to run and networked users can still function.  Just the local write hangs).

I just got the box back from the shop and its running great now after uninstalling avast! (that's the only change).

I don't know if this is related or not, but I also posted a problem installing WinPatrol on a more "plain vanilla" box running Windows XP 64 bit here

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23387.0

That would have been with the prior version of avast! but still possibly related to 64 bit Windows. 

I have two 64 bit workstations I still need to set up and will post more later if I have problems with them.


Correction:  The prior problem installing WinPatrol was not 64 bit Windows - but still similar.

[mauserme]

I don't know if this will help solve this issue or not, but I was finally able to roll out one of the workstations and observed the following:

Ewido was the only program that  installed successfully with avast running.

ASquared,  AShampoo, and some business software froze and became unresponsive during install while WinPatol froze but but was able to be terminated without rebooting.  I tried stopping the standard shield, then the standard shield + script blocker prior to installing but this did not work;  stopping all providers did work.  I did not notice the a-icon spinning during or just prior to the hangs but I was not able to focus my entire attention on just the icon.  AShampoo has been uninstalled because it will not load when the computer boots.  Finally, unlike the server I was able to make a new desktop folder but deleting the same empty folder would hang unless avast was stopped prior to the delete.

I put this workstation into production at the end of the day yesterday, so I may know more after a day or two.

The server has been live for a couple days but I was never able to make it function with avast installed.  I've had to temporarily install a different av on that computer.