BSOD (Avast + Nvidia Firewall)

[rygle]

Hi,

I've got a Gigabyte Nforce 4 motherboard with an AMD processor (K8N-Ultra-Sli). The mobo has a built in hardware firewall, which runs fine with Avast 4.6 on the drivers from the Gigabyte website (Nvidia v6.31), however when I install the new drivers off the Nvidia website (v6.53) it boots fine, but as soon as Avast tries to do anything net related it will blue screen and reset too quick to read the error message.

If I turn off all the Avast services, it will run fine, but if I try to update Avast over the net it will crash the computer again, so it's definitely clashing with Avast.

The only solution at the moment is to un-install the Firewall drivers, and revert back to the version from Sept last year, which aren't as speed optimised or Firefox browser friendly.

Has anyone out there experienced similar, or does anyone know a workaround?

Kind Regards,

Rygle.

[pk]

Please send me couple of your latest minidump files (\Windows\Minidump folder) to my email: kurtin@avast.com
Thank You !

[REDACTED]

But be aware!
nVidias firewall is not the big hit it was supposed to be! Nearly 90% of users trying to enable it get same problems like BSOD or non-working RASPPOE ......
On my system too it looks like the 6.31 is the best driver for nf3 boards with hw-firewall enabled and with the newer nf4 it looks similar....... Don´t try other/newer drivers unless U got a clean backup and plenty of spare time to waste on tweaking and rebooting several times .

It´s really a shame what the special 3com squat by nvidia made of this genius feature...

Beneath - I got mine working with nf3 and 6.31 - everything incl. different messanger, https, filesharing runs like a charm ......

Greets
S@uDepp

[DukeNukem]

nforce driver 6.53 + firewall

DFI nforce 4 Ultra D
Epox 9nda3j nforce 3 ultra

Works fine for me with the above boards.

Can you try disabling DEP, if your using XP SP2

Control Panel

System

advanced tab

System startup and recovery > settings

Click on edit

Change the word after /noexecute=

to AlwaysOff

So it looks like this.

/noexecute=AlwaysOff

Then File > save

close and restart your PC.

[rygle]

Hi again,

Thanks for all your advice. I've looked for the minidump folder in Windows (hidden files viewable) but can't find it. I've got SP2, so this may be for older versions, or may need to be enabled somewhere. I've also done a search on the whole system for "dump" and found nothing that looked related.

On the Firefox front, I should clarify that the browser works fine, but the firewall admin interface has visual problems with menus, which means reverting to IE. On the whole I am very happy with the Nvidia firewall. I've been used to using Zone Alarm free version, and this seems to do pretty much everything ZA does. I run it on high, and I've tested it with things like Steve Gibson's "Leaktest" and "Shields Up" and get a clean bill of health (see http://grc.com)

Thanks also for the tip re: DEP - I'll give that a try and report back. No time today.

Rygle.