Avast Home & ATI TV Wonder now play well together

[g-b]

I recently installed an ATI TV Wonder Pro card and found that the TV video would periodically freeze, causing system to lock up - no mouse, keyboard, etc. Also, TV Record would freeze after exactly 1 minute 8 seconds. Using other TV software was better than ATI with longer time before freeze, but with "stuttering" - where picture would freeze for several seconds and then continue.

I finally solved the problem (so far anyway) by adding all ati dlls and exes in the windows\system32 dir to Avast exclusion list - there's 11 of'em. I also added the "ati technologies" and "ati multimedia" dirs (in program files) to the Avast exclusion list.

Finally, to solve the record freeze, I added the dir I use for recording destination to the Avast exclusion list.

I've let the TV view run for about 5 hours now with no freeze. I also recorded for 90 minutes.

I thought this "fix" might be helpful for others.

When I have time (and feel like being bored to death) I intend to remove files, one at a time, from the exclusion list to see if I can narrow this "fix" down a bit.

[pk]

I think you didn't solve your problem so, thereby you'll add files to avast's exclusion list. If avast scans files it does NOT lead to any side effects like computer freezing. It's the same process as you'd like to look for 'aaa' string in all files (only: open -> read -> close). I'd say it looks like drivers problem - let us know if you still have 'freezing' problem, you could generate a dump report we'd analyze. Thanks.

[g-b]

Sorry, but, yes, this did fix the problems.

Before excluding the files (see previous), I tested this theory by stopping the on access scan. That worked - that's when I decided to try excluding the files.

I went the driver route first. I tried every possible combination of drivers for the ATI TV Wonder, Video card, and even the MoBo. There was absolutely no change no matter what driver combination was used.

Once I excluded the files and dirs as previously posted, the problem disappeared and has not returned. I've left the TV View software running and it has not exhibited the problems I outlined.

To be honest, pk, your post sounds more like a Microsoft typical answer - pass the buck to another cause. 

[igor]

Let's put it this way: PK knows the internals of avast! and simply cannot imagine a way how this "solution" might work.

In any case, if there really were a conflict between avast! and ATI drivers, the right thing to do would be to generate and inspect the dumps, as PK suggested.

[g-b]

As pk says, "if you still have a freezing problem...." - I don't! Problem is most assuredly fixed and the Avast icon no longer spins crazily while the TV viewer is running.

The problem may very well be caused by ATI drivers. Anyone who has ever used an ATI product knows how finicky ATI drivers are - and that, sometimes, a "new" driver release creates more problems than it fixes.

In this case, it's obvious to me that the ATI drivers and Avast do not want to play together. As with little children, if they can't get along, separate them. That's what I did, and it worked.