Hi!
I'm using Avast 4.6 home edition with Kerio Personal Firewall 4 (4.1.2 driver 4.0.5806) with XP Professional SP2.
I am dual booting with another copy of Windows XP which has same version of Kerio, but I have not yet updated Avast (still older version 4.1)
I have experienced some lockups, which I think most likely stem from low level drivers (antivirus, firewall). The lockups only occur on first boot (avast 4.6) and not on 2nd boot (avast 4.1). The system is otherwise stable (24h of 2 instances Prime95).
The lockup occurs when emule is running and I'm doing light tasks in the foreground such as surfing (Firefox), Office (Word/Excel) and Winamp. Comparably on the other boot I game for hours together (Wolfenstein Enemy Territory) (which taxes system considerably more than the light office tasks I had 0 problems on the other boot.
Thus I have ruled out power or unstable hardware as a cause.
The lockup occurs suddenly - mouse cursor freezes and I can only reset machine. During occurance of lockup I have emule running in the background (so far have experienced 3 such lockups since I reinstalled Windows (clean reinstall with slipstreamed SP2) about 3 weeks ago.
With previous installation of first boot (SP1, avast 4.1 and older version of Kerio) I had no such lockups. On the other boot I have only upgraded to SP2 and installed new version of Kerio PF (updated when prompted), but have not updated Avast to 4.6 from 4.1 (if it works don't fix it), I'm only updating virus database automatically.
The 4.6 version has added aditional protection and Kerio is also a web filter wannabe (I use free functionality only and disable web filtering which expires after 30 days). The Service Pack2 has also changed TCP/IP stack as event viewer now tells me "TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts." when running emule. Also Zone Alarm when I tried it few years ago has caused considerable problems and concurrently with Kerio 2.0 rendered my system unbootable. So I have reason to suspect the lockup stems from TCP/IP stack.
Otherwise the NIC is 3COM onboard 3C920 3C905C-TX Compatible and I'm using drivers provided by Windows and I never had a problem with it.
The reason for using dual boot is that:
- I can determine whether the problem is software or hardware quickly.
- I can use different graphic drivers and settings (more suited to games or more suited to applications).
- I have one "stable" boot where I install only tested applications I need, drivers and programs and one "test/gaming" boot where I install only tiny apps and games and I also test any new applications here before installing them on "stable" boot.
- If either boot becomes corrupt I can reboot and continue on other boot.
Questions:
- Have you or any users experienced lockups with other low level drivers (firewalls)?
- Which free personal firewall does Avast recommend that is most compatible with Avast antivirus? (The Windows firewall has considerably less rules setting options than Kerio in my observation.)
- Can I disable some of protection shield functionality that deals with networking - I consider the risk of virus very low as the last time I had one was in mid 90's on DOS (appart from few executable email attachments which I didn't open anyway)? I also have my computer behind a router, I have tightened passwords, disabled access for non authentificated users, I use Firefox as default web browser and I never install unknown applications.
Otherwise release 4.6 seems an improvement overall: With 4.1 I had problems configuring Thunderbird and imap server access, while with 4.6 it worked "out of the box" without any configuring and installing.
