Alwil Software\Avast\ashmaiSv.exe

[First John]

I got this wierd message while downloading with Newsbin.
It displayed as suome sort of programming error, like C++
or something dot.net.

Buffer overrun has been detected which has corrupted this program's internal state.
The program cannot safely continue execution & must now be terminated.

Then all downloading ceased until I rebooted.

I appear to have a ton of minidumps.

A previous thought was Alcohol was doing something.
I removed alcohol.  I removed Nero.  I tried Ashampoo
& gor 4 dvds burned before it started crashing again.

I have swapped out the memory.

If I keep removing software, I won't need this 160 gig HD.
I seem to run into more problems burning from the C drive
than if I burn from my USB2 drive.

I'm starting to babble here, drooling from both sides of my mouth.

In 2-3 weeks time I will hav a newer system up & running.
Do I just give up & wait for th new system, or continue fighting this?

Thanks for all your past help.

First john.

[First John]

Follow up.

I had a long talk with the person I buy my computer parts from, & he states that he has
encountered random crashing just from having a USB2 device plugged in.  I will pursue tis
a bit more to see if we have we have any hardware in common, or if it is a specific MB/Processor or whatever.

So at this point, I have removed my USB2 cable from the computer, & have burned 5
DVD Iso's with no hiccups.  I will start re-installing stuff I took out & see what happens.

It really frustrates me  & must drive you technicians nuts, that all the error messages I get on crashing out, point to the virus scanner.  I know from the technicians, that the minidumps point elsewhere.  I am going to slug away at this & will keep this board advised of my findings.

Thanks again

John

[vojtech]

Some problems in the mail scanner that might cause this are repaired in the new version:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12798.0

[First John]

Since I removed my USB2 storage device from the system, I have had minimal crashes.
Avast hasn't had any error messages pointed at it, & I've been able to burn over 20 DVD's
without interruption.

I've still had 1-2 reboots, but nothing like before.....................

First John

[First John]

Finally solved the problem.
 

It appears I had a marginal power supply.
I replaced the power supply, doubled the ram
& now the system performs flawlessly.

250 watts was a bit on the small side, & I guess
as long as I did just the basics, everything was fine.
Start to burn a DVD & bingo, power drain, reboot.

Thanks again for all the help.


John

[Lisandro]

Wow... we can't imagine such a solution...
As we can see, computer is not a deterministic land 
Glad to know you've got it and that was not related to avast! 

[lakrsrool]

Same thing happened to me before my Power Supply (PS) went out.  My PS failed completely very quickly after just a few random shutdowns.  Sorry I didn't notice this topic before, but I probably wouldn't have thought of this anyway since it was years ago that it happened to me.

Not easy to remember all possible solutions.

[DavidR]

A little strange, when PSUs are on the way out (or other hardware items like ram), you usually end up with a Black screen of death or problems on startup when load on the PSU is highest, rather than what appear to be software errors.

[First John]

I took out a 250 watt PS & replaced it with a 350 watt PS.
I was told that AMD systems tend to be more power hungry
than the equivalent Intel system.    Now I believe it.

Again, many thanks for all the help.

John

[First John]

I'm baaaaaaack!!!!!

I have just got through updating a second system with all the Microsoft updates, & have started crashing when closing out a simple game like Zuma.

What I was wondering, is Avast robust enough, that by using Avast & a good firewall, I can run safely without all these updates?  I'd like to restore my computer to as close as possible to a fresh installation, remove every security update possible, & carry on with just the virus scanner & firewall.

Hopefully that will give me the stability.

Am I safe in doing so?

John

[TedNelly]

John I would not recommend  this approch as a lot of the update are OS specific
you would leave your self open to all sorts of attacks

[Lisandro]

Hopefully that will give me the stability.

I don't think so... You won't find stability and security removing them.
If you have troubles with your system, better is trying to solve them then to remove the updates and patches.

[CharleyO]

***

First John ... if you continue your line of thought, you will, within days, have a computer you cannot even use. It is essentual in this day-&-time that all security measures (patches, updates, etc) be used and updated at least once a week.

If your computer is crashing, then there is a reason and this needs to be solved. You should be getting some type of warning or error message when this happens. What are they? Can you post the exact text or a screenshot of these warnings or error messages?


***

[First John]

Regarding my system that was crashing after updates, it turned out to be a bad memory stick,
got it replaced under warranty.

On my main system, that caused so much hair loss,
I finally found the solution for all my reboots: Hardware bug in the Via Chipset.
It seems specific to the Gigabyte GA7ZXE mainboard.
IDE Channel 0 & 1 can't both run in UDMA at the same time.

The solution is to put the optical drive in PIO mode, I'm told this is horribly slow,
The alternative solution is to replace the mainboard with something more friendly.

Maybe solution 3 will be to buy an IDE card for the Optical Drives.

Things are looking up ..................


First John

[DavidR]

Thanks for the feed back First John, so my guess on the RAM wasn't far off the mark then

Shame about the motherboard, I have a Gigabyte GA-7VAX and no such bug in the Via chipset (or I have been lucky), Dual Layer multi format DVD/CD RW is working fine without PIO setting.