PC hangs whan saving excel spreadsheet

[silentmonkey]

Hmm I think I've found a bug.

My PC hangs whenever I save a spreadsheet to a network share on which I've enabled offline folder support. PC is running WinXP Pro SP2, Office 2003 and server is 2003 SBS. All was working fine until I replaced AVG with Avast

Excel saves fine to local drives and network shares on which I have not enabled offline access. It also save to the offline enabled share if I "Stop on-access Protection". But with avast enabled Excel hangs at the end of the save. Then everything grinds to a halt. I cannot terminate anything in task mgr or shut down the system. Only way out is to Power off.

Now I've discovered the problem is related to Avast I found that I can Stop on-access when the problem occurs and excel the generates a fault report but the system still hangs.

Any one with any Ideas?

Mark

[szc]

First of all, WELCOME to forums !

Have you completely and 100% removed AVG prior installing avast ? Did you rebot your system prior installing avast! and after removing AVG ? Check your computer for possible AVG leftovers, as well as Windows registry. Just a thought... I believe you already cleaned everything AVG related carefuly from your system, but it's always better to double check than sorry...

If nothing helps, we should wait for someone from Alwil team to take a closer look at this problem.

Regards !

[Lisandro]

This really annoys me... Why does an user come here, ask, and never come back? 

[christof]

Hello,
I just replace Notona Antivirus with Avast today, my computer, XP SP2, hang three times when saving an Excel file on a network share (Samba). I never had this before. It don't do that every time i save, just sometime.
Only way out is to Power off.
I don't know if it's the same trouble...

PC is running WinXP Pro SP2, Office 2000 and server is Samba 3.0 on Debian Sarge
Avast 4.6.623

Sorry for my poor English
Thanks

[silentmonkey]

To S.Z.Craftec:
Thanks for the welcome and you are correct. The problem also exists on a clean install of winXP pro SP2 with ms antispyware and office 2003.

 To Technical:
Ouch, someone’s impatient!  You should be aware that there are many reasons why an instant reply is not forthcoming just like I do not expect an instant fix to the problem. My life does not revolve around this forum, I have a daytime job, My ADSL link was down from 4pm Monday to 10am today,  I have been spending time investigating the problem further.... etc. To me 29 hours can in no way be classed as never especially when I was expecting the next post from the Alwil team.

Anyway I now have a reproducible test case using:
Avast 4.6 Home Build Mar2005 (4.6.623)
VPS 516-1

1) Create a shared folder on a server
2) From a windows XP pro client (Note XP Home does not support offline folders) with Office 2003 installed connect to the share
3) Create a Excel or Word document
4) From explorer right mouse click the file and select make available offline
5) If this is the first time offline files have been used then complete the wizard using default options
6) Reopen the document and make a change
7) Save document

The system will then hang. This does not occur if On-Access protection is disabled. So is this an Avast or XP bug? I suspect Avast since when I was using AVG I did not see the problem but that was also pre SP2.

So far the only file type I've found that exhibit the problem are word and excel though I have not tried an extensive list. Could it be macro related?


Can anyone else reproduce the problem?
Is this a know problem?
Do you need more Info?
I am more than willing to do any further testing you require.

Mark

[Lisandro]

To Technical:
Ouch, someone’s impatient!  You should be aware that there are many reasons why an instant reply is not forthcoming just like I do not expect an instant fix to the problem. My life does not revolve around this forum, I have a daytime job, My ADSL link was down from 4pm Monday to 10am today,  I have been spending time investigating the problem further.... etc. To me 29 hours can in no way be classed as never especially when I was expecting the next post from the Alwil team.

Mark, I'm terribly sorry... Better, I'm glad you come back 
No need to explain... but can you understand me that it's a bit frustrating being here helping and nobody listening...

[Hopismum]

welcoming another monkey to the forum       

hey Technical         We live in a time now,  with cell phones, and computers.. where we seem to expect instant results all the time.    Sometimes that bites us in the butt     

[silentmonkey]

Thanks Technical. I can appreciate the frustration. I've have worked on a help desk and there is nothing worst than people whining and then you never hear from them again when you try and help.

Hi Connie. I love your picture. Its prompted me to add mine

Christof:
Have you enabled offline support on the samba share? If so disable it and try again.


Mark

[christof]

Hi Mark,
The offline support is already disable on all the samba share...
Maybe Samba doesn't work exactly like windows server.

[silentmonkey]

Had a sneaky suspicion that was the case. I know you cannot enable it on a Netware share but as Samba is SMB based I thought it might support it.

Mark

[christof]

I just upgrade avast in 4.6.652 (i had the 6.623) , it seems that the problem is solved.
no more crash when opening excel file on the samba share.

Thanks Avast Team

[silentmonkey]

Thanks Christof, 4.6.652 Fixes the problem for me too.  

My thanks also go to the Avast team.

Mark

[igor]

Glad to hear it works, even though I'm not sure how exactly it got "solved".
I'm not aware of any recent fixes regarding this issue (which doesn't mean there were none, they certainly could have been done without my knowledge ). Let's hope the problem won't reappear in some of the next versions.
Thanks for the info.

[wishiknew]

Thank god for Avast.

I was having this exact samba share problem with mcafee vs9 ever
since that evil april 20th program update.

Keep up the good work!

[enotracuk]

Sorry to rain on your parade.

I came searching for this topic because we experienced the same problem starting yesterday.
The PC in question is running Win XP SP2 and Office 97 with Avast Standard Shield 4.6-652. When the sensitivity is set to High, it cannot save an Excel file to a Samba network share. It can save to a Windows network share. When the sensitivity is set to Normal it works OK.

The problem only occurs on Win XP machines. Win 2000 is OK.

Investigation on the MS help site shows that Excel saves files in 3 steps.
1) Save to a temporary file
2) Delete original file
3) Rename temporary file to correct file name

Steps 1 and 2 are OK as we end up with a valid temporary file and the original file has gone. The critical point appears to be step 3, the renaming.

We can live with the using Normal sensitivity for the moment. Maybe this info might help to track down the problem?