BSOD all of the sudden as of 8/16/2012

[CFAUVEL]

for the past 2 days I've been pulling out my hair (it is thinning enough on its own) with BSOD for STOP: 0x000000c4. The screen did not state what driver was having the issue so figuring out was a nightmare.

After 7 hours of messing with restore points and system configuration I was finally lucky enough to get a mini.dmp to save.

Along with the hours of getting the windows debugging Developer Kit and setting the symbols path, etc. I was able to see that three drivers in three dumps were mentioned.
RSTRUI.exe - apparently MS system restore stuff
ASWSP.SYS - some avast driver
AVASTSVC.exe - some avast driver

picking up on the avast common denominator I went into SYSTEM CONFIGURATION (in safe mode as I couldn't boot normally) and temporarily disabled the avast services (under services) and disabled the start of avast in STARTUP.

I also started avast in safe mode and unchecked a setting under TroubleShooting that stated "Load Avast services only after loading other system services"

So now I am up under normal mode, with no AVAST running, scared out of my mind. My kids browse the internet and get into some unsafe websites (nothing dirty).

What can I do?...I truly believe that the latest program update caused this. as avast is the only program I disabled and now the computer boots. Well actually I need to test a reboot to know for sure...figured since I have access right now I better start a thread.

I love avast, I hate to go to some other product.

Help

Crap my dmps are gone now...I wanted to add the latest to the thread. WTF

Going to reboot one more time to see if I can. I'll post the results.

[Asyn]

- Which avast!..?? (Free/Pro/IS)
- Which version..??
- OS..?? (32/64 Bit..? - which SP..?)
- Other security related software installed..??

[CFAUVEL]

damn so sorry

windows 7 professional 64 bit service pack 1 - 8gb ram - AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
avast FREE version 7.0.1456
Search & Destroy (1.6.2) with TeaTimer resident

[Gopher John]

You can disable TeaTimer, as it can cause various issues.  See http://www.safer-networking.org/faq/how-to-disable-spybot-sd-temporarily/.  Even though it says temporarily, you have to manually reverse the process to enable it again.

[CFAUVEL]

Ok with avast still disabled I have rebooted 3 times,  the last time after having installed the latest Office 2007 updates.

Going to try to uninstall avast and re-install and re-enable the services.

S&D - Tea Timer has been disabled too

[CFAUVEL]

ok I uninstalled -> rebooted normally -> re-installed latest download -> rebooted normally -> am writing this successfully in windows normal mode.

It took 7 hours last night to get to the point where I had a clue as to what driver was causing the issue.

It would be nice if windows gave you an idea as to the culprit.

and to be able to get the clue (windows debugging toolkit, etc) is a pain in the butt...it shouldn't have to be this difficult. As far as windows shutting down on me to "protect me" that's silly, I believe the OS can know the exe and driver dependencies and simply NOT load those objects with a warning that it didn't load these exes and drivers and report the company's info.

I don't write drivers or services, but my EXEs have the company and version number embedded in them.

ugh.

[CFAUVEL]

after I stated that  I fixed the issue by uninstalling/reinstalling the computer crashed as soon as I loaded the remainder of the important windows update.

To fix it I uninstalled avast again, finished loading the windows updates a little at a time (doing restore points after each set), and when finally done with the updates and rebooted fine, went and re-installed avast 7.0.1456.

It seems there is some conflict between AVAST and windows.

I am pretty sure this will happen again when MS releases a new important update.