Author Topic: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash  (Read 19476 times)

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leekb

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Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« on: January 16, 2005, 05:36:23 AM »
Intel P4 2.6C/1GB RAM/WinXP SP2/avast! Home Build Nov2004 (4.5.561)/Standard & Network Shield Only.

I switched from TrendMicro to avast 4.5 Home recently. I noticed after the switch,  a variety of applications (Office, Video Editing, browser, and many others, etc.) started to crash randomly (apps crash and closed by XP). The apps still managed to get started but they would just crash randomly for no apparent reason, sometimes in the middle of my work.  >:(

My PC was super stable before. Nothing else had changed on my system except the new resident - avast. It became the prime suspect. I observed my PC for a few days and finally I found clues linking avast to the crashes.

Whenever an application reads/writes files, the avast icon in the taskbar tray spins. The spinning must be the indication that avast is working in background scanning the files. Interestingly, while the avast icon is still spinning, and I move the apps window (by selecting the apps window at its caption bar and move the mouse), the apps almost always crashes. Then I noticed further that not only moving the apps window causes the crash. Basically when avast icon is spinning, doing things with your mouse in the application (like right-click) also likely to crash the apps too. Now that I know when the vulnerable period is, I would avoid doing anything in the apps window whenever I see avast icon spinning, to avoid another crash.

Now has anyone seen this before?

Offline Eddy

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2005, 05:40:33 AM »
Are you sure every trace of Trend is gone? (including the registry keys)
Does changing the settings for the standard shield provider make a difference?

leekb

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2005, 05:49:45 AM »
Yes. Every single trace of TrendMicro is gone. When the crashes started appearing, I wanted to isolate the problem. So I formatted the hard disk and scratch installed XP.

The configurations in the Standard & Network Shields are default. What changes do you suggest?

Offline Eddy

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2005, 05:53:47 AM »
"play" around a little with the settings, it may tell us more about what is going on.
Also enable "debug" logging in Avast. When a crash happens, there may be an entry in Avast's log file with more info.
Does disabling eg the network shield provider, makes a difference?

The only time I have seen what you describe is when someone was using Opera as webbrowser and listened to a live stream while doing other things. Only Opera closed, the rest of the applications remained working without problems.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2005, 05:58:26 AM by Eddy »

Offline igor

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2005, 01:25:34 PM »
I don't think avast!'s logging would record anything useful if it's the application that crashes, not avast!.

Anyway, the described symptoms really don't seem like anything that could be caused by avast!. To me, it sounds more like a hardware or OS problem (bad memory?)
A few examples of the crash messages (are there any additional information there?) might be useful...

leekb

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2005, 02:03:38 PM »
The apps crashes have become unbearable. It seems avast! is not for me. I have since switched to another virus scanner, which is also free for home use. All crashes mysteriously disappeared. Everything is working smoothly now.

Thank you guys for your help. I will relook at avast again when new versions become available.

Offline igor

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2005, 03:49:16 PM »
Unfortunatelly, you didn't supply any details about the crashes - so I really doubt we could do anything about it, when you're the only one having this kind of problems  :-\

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2005, 03:51:33 PM »
Leekb, can't you post more about the crashes...
You can help avast to be better and you can enjoy this powerfull antivirus application so do all of we (happy avast users)  8)
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Offline First John

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #8 on: January 24, 2005, 04:00:13 AM »
If I may jump in here, I haver had similar experiences.  I have been running Avast for a while now, & have been having periodic crashes.  Just after Christmas I started fresh with a new hard drive, new OS install etc.  The crashes kept on happening.  Saturday night, for no apparent reason, the computer re-booted, scanned the HD, repaired some damaged files, & then did it again 2 minutres later.    The result is a 160 Gig of unreadable unrecognizable hard drive.  I would up having to reformat & start afresh. 

I am not using avast at this moment, however if you wish, I have a second computer I am trying to network.  When I get it up & running I will run the same setup I had on my main box,  with Avast & Sygate firewall, & see if I can duplicate the crashes.

I will keep you informed.

John

Offline igor

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #9 on: January 24, 2005, 12:29:53 PM »
As I said - it's impossible to say more without detailed info about the crashes (there was some kind of crash info displayed, wasn't it?)

But still - I can imagine avast! crashing programs it is somehow connected to (such as Outlook, maybe). If there was a bug in avast!'s drivers, the computer might crash. If there was a bug in Script Blocker (avast! Pro only), the browser might crash.
But there is no connection between avast! and Office or video editing applications (as reported in the original post), so I really don't know how avast! could cause such crashes, even if it contained an unresolved bug.

Offline First John

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2005, 07:37:36 PM »
I haven't put avast on my non-esential computer yet, but I have been running Prevx on my essential one & no slow dons, crashes etc.  Talking to the guys at work about my experience with the computer lockingup & crashing, one buddy with a HP notebook sees the samethink with his system using avast.

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2005, 01:30:11 AM »
I haven't put avast on my non-esential computer yet, but I have been running Prevx on my essential one & no slow dons, crashes etc.  Talking to the guys at work about my experience with the computer lockingup & crashing, one buddy with a HP notebook sees the samethink with his system using avast.

John, I used and tested Prevx. Man, it promisses more than could do. It works but you have a 'feeling' of security bigger than the reality...  :( :-[
If you want to use avast. Please, disable Prevx while installing. You will save a lot of troubleshooting hours...
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Offline Eddy

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2005, 03:01:08 PM »
I got a system here where Avast seems to be closing down Opera. I will do some testing on it and see if I can get any error or other message about it in a log file or perhaps even a system dump. Will post back if I have more info.

Offline Eddy

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2005, 10:59:06 PM »
Well tried several things. And it definatly is Avast that is causing Opera to close.
I checked every available log file, but there was nothing in them related to this.
No minidump was created (as could be expected).

Enabling 'show detailed info' showed me it always happens when scanning the Opera cache folder.

Disabling standard-shield stopped the closings.
Adding Opera's cache folder to the exclusion list also stopped the closings.

Offline igor

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Re: Suspecting avastHome causes apps to crash
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2005, 11:21:13 PM »
Strange... what version of Opera and OS? Any firewall or similar apps?
Does the problem occur only on a particular web site?
Does it help when you disable scanning of created/modified files only? (if it's enabled, of course)
Would you be able to identify if a particular file is causing the problems? (in avast! Pro, you can turn on the creation of the full report file even for the resident protection task - although it's not a recommended setting, of course).