Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: r2baruch on December 12, 2005, 09:36:32 PM
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There is a similar thread for Win98, which I reviewed, but it seems appropriate to start again.
I recently installed avast home on PIII with 256MB RAM, Win-ME, DSL connection, OE6, IE6, everything fully patched, spywareguard, sygate personal firewall, and some other misc. security programs e.g. winpatrol, spyware blaster etc.
The computer seems to be fine while I am working, but if I leave it even for a few minutes it freezes and the only way out is to press the reset button.
I tried removing the tray icon (mentioned in a similar thread on Win98), bur that didn't help either.
I rather like the program and am willing to have a little (but not a lot of) patience to solve the problem, but if not then with regret I will have to switch to another program.
Previously I had Norton which I uninstalled cleanly followed by a comprehensive registry cleaning with a registry tool.
Many thanks for any suggestions.
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Is avast's VRDB enabled? If so, as an experiment, turn it off (disable), see if that helps.
Also, go into avast's program settings (right click on blue "a" icon in taskbar)--prg. settings is the 4th from the top of the menu... then, under Troubleshooting, switch odbc database to xml storage... then reboot... that helps sometimes.
I just installed avast! on a friend's home computer which has Win ME. Avast! worked perfectly fine. No crashes, no problems whatsoever.
If all else fails, uninstall avast, then re-install it with a fresh copy of avast. Your original install could have been corrupted.
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OK, I will give it a try and let you know.
Thanks.
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As Starfighter mentioned you may wel have to reinstall avast and although you have used a registry cleaner to rid yourself of NAV, it is harder to get rid off than the plague.
Another link worth looking at which is a program removal tool, which can remove a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039?Open&src=&docid=2001092114452606&nsf=nav.nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=)
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Starfighter's suggestions didn't help. Now I will try DavidR's suggestion to look for NAV remnants and then reinstall avast. However SymNRT doesn't work for NAV2003. A quick search in the registry does indeed reveal additional keys which I will try to remove without causing damage.
I will let you know how I progress because I can't continue this way much longer with repeated resets and scan disk.
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Starfighter's suggestions didn't help. Now I will try DavidR's suggestion to look for NAV remnants and then reinstall avast. However SymNRT doesn't work for NAV2003. A quick search in the registry does indeed reveal additional keys which I will try to remove without causing damage.
I will let you know how I progress because I can't continue this way much longer with repeated resets and scan disk.
Baruch, David is fully right. Trash left behind by NAV could prevent avast from working and even Windows from booting with another antivirus.
If you did not suceed, try to overinstall Windows Me at first time (you won't lose your data and programs), just to be sure the problem can't be corrected without formating and starting all over again.
We'll here for help...
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I have attached a few of the registry keys and values for symantec that still exist in the registry. There appear to be many more like it. I tried another registry tool and it didn't find them either. I found them by manually searching the registry.
To the best of my recollection ME does not permit overinstall the way 95 and 98 did but only reformat, but I will look for info on the Microsoft site.
In the meantime I have uninstalled and reinstalled avast and am now stopping for the day. I will see the condition of the computer tomorrow and let you know.
I appreciate your assurances of readiness to assist, and hope we will be able to resolve this.
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You may want to run Norton's "Rnav2003.exe" program that gets rid of those pesky Norton registry entries. Also, in your Add/Remove panel, not only do you have to remove Norton Anti-virus, but also Symantec Live Update (which is under a different heading).
Rnav info:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2001092114452606?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=1#_Section1
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Thanks again. I will give it a try when I get home this afternoon.
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Hello again,
Here is the current update:
Reinstalling avast from a new download didn't solve the problem.
Running Rnav.exe did not remove the symantec registry entries that I posted previously.
Live update (Norton) was previously removed when I uninstalled the NAV program.
What next?
By the way, I think that before I removed NAV, it allowed some viruses in. I did a complete scan immediately after installing avast. Avast removed one virus, but I am not sure about another. Before installing avast, the computer was definitely showing signs of virus infection which I do not see now, but could there still be a virus around that avast did not clear?
The computer freezing seems to becoming more frequent and severe.
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r2baruch,
Just to clarify things... please advise us -- if you remove avast! does your computer still experience any freezing/crashes?
Question is... is it software or your hardware failure....
To test for hardware failure:
Does your computer pass Memtest86+?
download here: http://www.memtest.org/
(run it for at least 5 passes)
and Prime95:
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
(run for 24 hrs)...
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This may take a while, but I will get back to you. With your help I do feel that I am progressing towards the solution.
Thanks.
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For a background on how to run Prime95 properly, read this:
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=33850.0
and info on overclocking (but is useful to troubleshoot hardware failures in general too):
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=40413.0
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I haven't done the hardware checks yet, but I have more info about the computer's behavior that seems to point to a malware problem.
1. The computer freezes even with avast uninstalled. I think, but am not positive, that the freezing occurs when no work is being done but at least so far not while actually working.
2. The computer has started rebooting itself from time to time.
Before uninstalling avast, I did a complete (standard) scan including archives but did not find anything. At some point I did an online scan, maybe Bitdefender and that also did not find anything.
In the meantime I will see about the hardware checking, but the computer's behavior does seem to point to software problems. It occurs to me also that the problems with Norton NAV that caused me to remove it may have been related to this problem and not to NAV. However, in any case I do not intend to reinstall Norton.
Would a HIJACKThis report be of any help?
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Would a HIJACKThis report be of any help?
It won't hurt.
I haven't done the hardware checks yet, but I have more info about the computer's behavior that seems to point to a malware problem.
The computer freezes even with avast uninstalled. I think, but am not positive, that the freezing occurs when no work is being done but at least so far not while actually working. The computer has started rebooting itself from time to time.
In fact, we must admit, Windows Me is very unstable.
I do recommend that you overinstall it. Your programs and data will be preserved.
You will only have to update (windows updates) lately.
I tried to manage more than once Windows Me installations... it's guess and try...
I think Me is the worst Windows version ever :P
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memtest returned no errors (5 passes).
highjackthis log attached
I think the situation is getting worse. today it froze while I was in the middle of checking mail.
Is it OK to delete the symantec entries that are in the highjackthis report? Even though HJKTS seems to be frozen as soon as it comes up and can only be closed through close programs dialog box.
Starfighter, what do you say about reinstalling windows?
Can you send me a link to instructions for reinstalling, I haven't found anything in microsoft.
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Is it OK to delete the symantec entries that are in the highjackthis report? Even though HJKTS seems to be frozen as soon as it comes up and can only be closed through close programs dialog box.
If you're not using any other Symantec product, I see no reason for not getting rid of that entries.
Can you send me a link to instructions for reinstalling, I haven't found anything in microsoft.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;315341
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
Boot from your Me CD and start installing overwriting the current version (Do not format the drive. This way all data will be preserved).
Use the same drive, same partition, same directory (possibly, C:\Windows).
Install a firewall (ZoneAlarm, for instance)
Install avast
Visit Windows Update and install all security patches/updates.
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Does mean I eill have to reinstall all the programs?
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Does mean I eill have to reinstall all the programs?
No, on contrary, they will stay all there is you DON'T reformat and install Windows IN THE SAME FOLDER as before.
All your programs and your documents, as I've said before, will be there.
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rdbaruch,
If I may make a suggestion, before you reinstall Windows ME... make sure you don't have any spyware. Avast doesn't detect spyware, as it is primarily just an antivirus program.
Here are 2 very good free (for home use) anti-spyware programs programs:
Spybot Search and Destroy (version 1.4)
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html
Adaware SE:
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html
Make sure to immediately update the spyware patterns/defintions before you do a scan/clean-up.
Run 1 program... then run the other program... as sometimes 1 will catch what the other doesn't...
Let us know if this helps...
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By the way... looking at your hijackthis log files, it looks like you have (or had at one time) other anti-virus programs installed (i.e. Trend Micro, Panda etc). Did you make sure to uninstall those? You should only use 1 anti-virus program at a time... otherwise you can run into problems.
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Those are their on-line scanning programs. They shouldn't be active or interfering as long as I don't run them. If you think they are the source of the problem I can remove them, but do you really think they are causing problems?
The condition of my computer seems to be deteriorating as to the frequency of freezing or rebooting. Today I had great difficulty booting up altogether. I also have mail undeliverable messages to an address that there is no way I would have sent something to.
Is it possible that the freezing occurs specifically in sites concerning computer security?
I also had difficulty generating the HJT log since the HJT seems to freeze after the scan but before letting me save the log.
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I can not say for sure but it seems you may have a "bot program" infection (undeliverable messages you did not send) that is stealing your system resources ... or else, for some other reason, you are losing system resources to something that shouldn't be. This could be the reason your computer is "freezing" and/or rebooting as these bot programs tend to max-out a computer's resources. >:(
Also, too much heat can also cause these things to happen. Check your cpu & system fans. Try running the computer with the side cover off to see if this improves the freezing/rebooting problem. Set a portable desktop fan blowing into the open case to see if this helps.
Sorry if these things have been suggested before but I did not read the first page of posts about this. ;)
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Thanks.
The heating point hasn't been suggested yet and I will give it a try.
However I suspect the problem is with a bot program or other malware. I have scanned with nearly everything readily available and have not yet found anything.
The only thing is a CA online scan found a browser hijacker peopleonpage.apropos in a zonemap\domains key in the registry, but the behavior is not hijacker behavior. I also found that the zonemap keys are full of ad related sites which I presume are sites that are being blocked from entering the computer by ie-spyads or spyware blaster etc.
CA also found netzip, fresh devices, and network1.popups in zonemap\domains, but I am not seeing behavior that I would relate to these sites.
In the meantime, the computer is close to becoming unusable with freeze or reboot every few minutes.
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The only thing is a CA online scan found a browser hijacker peopleonpage.apropos in a zonemap\domains key in the registry, but the behavior is not hijacker behavior. I also found that the zonemap keys are full of ad related sites which I presume are sites that are being blocked from entering the computer by ie-spyads or spyware blaster etc.
I think your assumption is right. These keys are there by ie-spyads and spyware blaster :)