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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: kdh on June 25, 2003, 02:56:32 AM

Title: Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: kdh on June 25, 2003, 02:56:32 AM
Been using Avast for a few months now and it seems to have been working fine.  Recently, I updated it and then began to get what seemed to be random lock-ups.  The screen would freeze and a I'd get green lines across the top of the screen.  Then when I restarted the PC would just lock-up while loading Windows 98.   Thought it was a video driver problem at first.  Nope.  Well to make a long (very long) story short.  It took a me a day or two of diagnosing the problem until I realized that my PC only locked up if I tried using the CD drive while Avast was running.  Anyone else have this problem?  Any suggestions for fixing this?  (and yes, I did reinstall Avast.  Still same problem)

Thanx in advance!
kdh
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: igor on June 25, 2003, 10:33:27 AM
Hello!

How is your resident protection set up? I.e. when you click on the resident protection settings in the system tray and select Standard Shield, what sensitivity have you set? If you select "Details" to show the advanced configuration window and press the Customize button to set the options for Standard Shield, what are the settings on the 4 pages you'll see?

What OS exactly do you have? Win98 or Win98SE?

I guess it's useless to ask when you say you get green lines across the top of the screen (it looks like the system is completely dead), but anyway - if you wait for a while (e.g. 3 minutes), does anything happen (like, the avast blue icon starts to rotate again for a while)?

Do you have any special low-level software installed (something concerning the CD-ROM or IDE controller, burning software, CD emulator, ... any other antivirus or anything similar to the resident protection, some kind of disk monitor...)?
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: kdh on June 25, 2003, 01:40:11 PM
I'm using Win98SE.  Nothing special running.  I try to keep other programs at a minimum as my PC is not a speed machine (in fact it's nicknamed Pokey).  No other antivirus.  I am using Zone Alarm firewall.

In regards to Avast, protection set at Standard, and I pretty much left all the default settings alone.

Once the PC crashes it's frozen solid.  I've waited to see if anything happens and it seems to stay frozen.  The only way I can restart it is to turn off the power.

Any ideas?  Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

...kdh
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: igor on June 25, 2003, 01:58:55 PM
No ideas yet... :-\

Even though you didn't change the settings, could you go to the Standard Shield settings, press Customize and write the options you have set? I know there were some changes during some updates, so I'm not sure what "default" you may have in fact.

Also, you may try to disable some of the options (e.g. Scan files on open if you have it on) and see if it changes anything.

Does the freeze occur every time you try to you access your CD-ROM? Does it freeze immediatelly before you read anything (maybe even before you list the content of the CD)? If yes, does it freeze even when you try to access the CD when no CD is in drive? If no, does it depend on the CD you have in your drive?

Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: kdh on June 25, 2003, 02:39:07 PM
OK, we're getting somewhere now.  As you suggested, I disabled "scan files on open" and was able to solved the problem w/the CD drive.  It started w/no problems.

Before, the PC would lock-up as soon as it tried to access a CD (I tried several different disks), even just reading the disk when the PC started up.  If there was no CD in the drive, there was no problem.

Here are the settings as I had them before I took your suggestion.  The options I have selected are--

Scanner (basic)
scan diskette boot sectors
   "    OLE docs or open
   "    Executed programs
         32 bit executables
         16 bit    "
         MSDOS-based

Scanner (advanced)
scan files on open
scan files w/these extentions -- WS?
Always scan WSH-script files

Blocker -
Default extention set

Advanced
nothing selected

Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: igor on June 25, 2003, 03:03:17 PM
I must say it's still a mystery for me... ???

OK, when you disable Scan files on open, you have no problems reading the CD...
Scanning executed programs is still enabled... what happens when you execute some program directly from the CD?
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: kdh on June 26, 2003, 03:56:01 AM
Hmm... Well, maybe I spoke too soon.  Tried running CD again and same old crash happened.  Then tried disabled both scan files on open and scan executables and still crashed.  Just to make sure I'm not completely off the mark, I restarted the computer running with everything exactly the same but w/o avast running.  CD started w/o any problems.  
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: igor on June 26, 2003, 10:44:15 AM
I still think it must be a conflict with some software you're running... if possible, could you please download StartupList (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/startuplist.zip), unzip it and start from the command-line with the following arguments:
StartupList.exe /complete /full /forceall
It will create a "startuplist.txt" file in the same directory you started it from... and if you could send this .txt file to support@asw.cz...

thanks
Title: Re:Need help! Avast! crashing CDROM
Post by: kdh on June 27, 2003, 03:00:07 AM
Thanks.  I'll send it to you shortly.

...kdh