Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: t_r_davies on August 05, 2007, 11:50:30 PM
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Hi all,
After updating to 4.7.1029 Home a couple of weeks ago, my PC has started hanging at odd times. Mostly it's happened while I've been downloading files at the command line using either wget or cURL but earlier today it hung while I was copying a load of files between drives and once it happened while downloading a ~30M file in Firefox. The avast update is the only driver or kernel-related thing that's changed recently, which leads me to suspect that's the cause. The hangs have been total, requiring a hard reboot; I've been able to use Ctrl-Alt-Del once each time but even forcing logoff or reboot from there hasn't worked.
I've tried disabling avast completely and downloading the same files again but it hasn't hung once. Of course that doesn't mean avast IS the cause, it may be that my machine has decided to play nicely for a while just out of spite! I can't find any posts here about major problems with the new update, but has anybody else experienced any problems like this at all? All advice gratefully received :)
Running: Win2K SP4, wget 1.10.1, cURL 7.16.4, Firefox 2.0.0.5
Edit: added information about hangs requiring hard reboot.
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I have the same problem since update.
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How did you update? A complete install or just the update?
sometimes an update doesn't go quite right and a reinstall of the new version is required.
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How did you update? A complete install or just the update?
I updated from 4.7.1001, but have never had any problems with updates in the past, and I've done it at least 7 or 8 times before. I'd rather not have to remove it completely and reinstall from scratch but if that's necessary then so be it, hopefully someone here will be able to help first though!
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The regular auto update or manual program update for the most part has no problem, I have never had to do a clean install because of a failed update. Occasionally you left with little option but to reinstall and in this case I feel this would be easier than trying to find out why sour system is hanging. If nothing else, a clean install should eliminate avast from the equation if it continues after a clean install.
However, a clean install really isn't a problem, if you have made any changes in the avast4.ini you can always save that file to another folder and when you are done reinstalling copy it back replacing the default one.
I really can't see why you wouldn't want to install from scratch it really isn't that much hassle ?
Download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html (http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html) and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.
Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here (http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html) and save it to your HDD.
Now uninstall, reboot, run the uninstall utility, reboot install the latest version, reboot.
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i adding my note here as i got some hangs while dling big files too ...
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Strange indeed... And it's a complete system freeze?
In this case, it would be useful to create a memory dump when the problem is simulated.
For instructions, please see here: http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=71
Thanks
Vlk
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Strange indeed... And it's a complete system freeze?
In this case, it would be useful to create a memory dump when the problem is simulated.
For instructions, please see here: http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=71
Hi Vlk,
Yes, it's a complete system freeze, something I've never seen happen before on this machine. I'm going to do a complete uninstall and reinstall from scratch as recommended above and then see if it happens again, I'll use your tip for generating a memory dump.
@DavidR: thanks for the link to aswclear, I'll do as you suggest and see if that solves the problem.
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Your welcome, befor you do it you might want to run that memory dump for Vlk it may provide some insight as to why it might have happened.
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Your welcome, befor you do it you might want to run that memory dump for Vlk it may provide some insight as to why it might have happened.
Yes, I'll try that first, but of course now I bet any sum you care to name that the damn machine will work fine just when I WANT it to hang! :)
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Sod's Law at work ;D
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Sod's Law at work ;D
Well I've defeated Sod, unbelievably, it hung first time!
Vlk, I've uploaded the memory dump as requested to the incoming FTP directory, the filename is dump-t_r_davies.zip.
:)
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Thanks for the dump. Got it OK.
Well, ...I don't wanna blame anyone, but the dump clearly shows that the machine is stuck in the Comodo driver (cmdmon.sys).
Avast can really hardly be responsible for this, the Comodo driver is simply blocking a number of processes in the system (Explorer.exe including)...
Cheers
Vlk
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Thanks for the dump. Got it OK.
Well, ...I don't wanna blame anyone, but the dump clearly shows that the machine is stuck in the Comodo driver (cmdmon.sys).
Avast can really hardly be responsible for this, the Comodo driver is simply blocking a number of processes in the system (Explorer.exe including)...
Cheers
Vlk
Ah, so it's Comodo Firewall causing the problem, that's new, I haven't had a single problem with that since installing it last year; it's obviously just a weird coincidence that it's started hanging after I updated avast. I'll look around on the Comodo forums to see if anyone's experienced anything similar, probably end up doing a clean install of that as well as avast to see if the problem clears. I don't like the fact that it's also blocking Explorer, maybe a subtle locking problem or race condition somewhere...
Sorry to waste your time looking at this, but the timing made it genuinely appear to be an avast problem. Keep up the excellent work (and support!) :)
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To start, I'd suggest upgrading Comodo to its latest version.
The driver you're using has a link date of Jan 28, 2007, while the latest version of CPF (2.4.18.184) was released on February 15th.
I suppose the version your using is 2.4.17.183 (?)
Cheers
Vlk
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To start, I'd suggest upgrading Comodo to its latest version.
The driver you're using has a link date of Jan 28, 2007, while the latest version of CPF (2.4.18.184) was released on February 15th.
I suppose the version your using is 2.4.17.183 (?)
I do have version 2.4.18.184 (upgraded a couple of times from earlier versions), evidently cmdmon.sys just hasn't needed updating for a while. Version 3 should be released fairly soon so I'll upgrade to that in time, in the meantime though I'll see how a clean install goes.
Cheers :)
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Based on what Vlk said, I'm not sure a clean install of avast would have an effect, but it certainly won't hurt, unless you are suggesting a clean install of comodo.
What surprises me is that there are quite a few forum members also using comodo firewall and no other reports of this issue. So it may only occur if a number of circumstances are present.
You could contact comodo, they have in the past been responsive and let them know about the problem and offer them the dump report. Assuming there is no conflict of interest with it being an avast generated memory dump.
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Based on what Vlk said, I'm not sure a clean install of avast would have an effect, but it certainly won't hurt, unless you are suggesting a clean install of comodo.
Oops, yes I did indeed mean a clean Comodo install.
What surprises me is that there are quite a few forum members also using comodo firewall and no other reports of this issue. So it may only occur if a number of circumstances are present.
You could contact comodo, they have in the past been responsive and let them know about the problem and offer them the dump report. Assuming there is no conflict of interest with it being an avast generated memory dump.
True, from both this and the Comodo forum I've seen that it's an extremely popular combination of AV and firewall. I'll raise a ticket with Comodo and see what they need, hopefully I won't have to upload another 200M zipped dumpfile! You're right though, it could well be a very specific set of circumstances almost impossible to replicate anywhere else.
Slightly OT, do you by any chance do anything apart from live on this board David?! From your post count and apparent usual speed of response I'd be tempted to say not ;D
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I've been here for some time ;D over three years now.
I work from home so I check the forums every hour or so for replies in topics that I have contributed. The forum software helps so you don't have to go finding new posts.
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Right, I removed Comodo, did a complete clean install and restored my backed-up settings. A couple of weeks later and everything has been fine, large downloads in Firefox and at the command-line using wget and cURL were completing without any problems. However, last night I was pulling down a 60M ISO image with cURL and my PC locked up again. I did submit a support request to Comodo but things there are a bit slow at the minute, I think they're all busy on getting version 3 ready. In the meantime I'll just temporarily disable CPF if I'm downloading large files, that does seem to fix the problem. Cheers for all the help guys :)
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Thanks for the update.
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Hi, i'm experiencing the same problem. In my case, I turned on the feature of off-line files feature of win xp sp2 to synch the files from my pc to my laptop. With Avast turned on, when I save a Word file the second time (open, save, close, open and save again), Windows freeze and I have to boot it. This not happens if Avast isn't running. I tried to turn off Avast imediately after the freeze to see if Windows unfreezes and Avast let me pause it, but after that I had to boot. At this moment, I saved the memory dump and upload it as "MEMORY_breno_23-08-2007_v2.zip", following the recipe on "http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=71".
My Avast is 4.7.1029 and I installed the full version. I hope you can help me.
TIA