Author Topic: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast  (Read 36080 times)

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Offline Raymond61

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Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« on: November 23, 2017, 12:25:10 AM »
After electing to put background processes "To sleep" with Avast Cleanup to improve performance, (Adobe Reader and Adobe Photoshop Elements 12) the programs could not be opened until I uninstalled the Avast Cleanup program. My understanding was that the programs would start on demand when needed. I also could not get the cleanup program itself to open, this is why I uninstalled. Maybe I'll try again someday when the bugs are worked out.

Offline Stellarman

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2017, 10:20:25 AM »
Hi,

this is definitely not the intended behavior as it should start the sleeping programs on demand as you described.
We would like to investigate what happened on your computer and why it does not work how it should but for that we would need the log files.

If you would be so kind and try to install it again and collect the logs we would really appreciate your help!

Log files are stored here: c:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Tuneup\log\ and you could then upload it either to your favourite file share or you could use our FTP server ftp.avast.com/ftp/incoming/ (login: anonymous).

Thank you!

REDACTED

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2017, 09:14:33 PM »
I put Facebook Game room to sleep and it won't wake up either.  I've followed the instructions to use the Rescue option and Avast now thinks its running but it won't open.  I've rebooted my windows 10 box a few times and just now uninstalled Game room and reinstalled.  It was hard to reinstall but I finally got it back.  But it still won't open.  WTH!

REDACTED

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2017, 05:34:42 PM »
Well I don't know what did it but I was finally able to get Facebook Gameroom going again.  Other than the steps I outlined in my earlier post I did nothing further.  Looks like it take 24 hours or more to fix itself once you have woken it via the Rescue page.

Not good Avast definitively not a selling point.  >:(

Offline Stellarman

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2017, 05:21:27 PM »
Hi,

this is very unfortunate situation and we are sorry for that.

Could you please help us to investigate the issue by collecting the Cleanup log files?

Log files are stored here: c:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Tuneup\log\ and you could then upload it either to your favourite file share or you could use our FTP server ftp.avast.com/ftp/incoming/ (login: anonymous).

Thank you!

Offline loroperr

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2017, 07:55:49 PM »
This same thing just happened to me, too! Both of my Paintshop Pro versions will not open, even though they show to be running in Task Manager. My Sony DVD creator lost its registration and has to be re-register. What a mess!!!! The cleanup speeded up the computer, for sure, but at WHAT A TERRIBLE COST!

Offline loroperr

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2017, 07:59:18 PM »
I agree with everyone that this is a horrible program! I do not recommend it. What a nightmare and I'm not sure it's even fixable. Plus, the verification code is SO blasted hard to read, it takes a dozen attempts to post a comment here.

Offline loroperr

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2017, 08:53:36 PM »
This is going to cost a fortune to fix the damage caused by Avast Cleanup, if it even can be fixed. I'm furious. I have a mountain of work to do and none of my crucial programs will open. I just called my computer repair person and she's going to have to try to fix it without destroying what Avast didn't already destroy.

REDACTED

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2018, 10:53:03 AM »
QUICK SOLUTION:  Within Avast Cleanup, click on "Speed up" icon. Open "Background & startup programs". Scroll to the bottom of the list, find the green font that says "# programs sleeping" and click on it. Find your program on the list and click "wake". If it's not on the list, see an Alternate temporary work-around in the next paragraph:

ALTERNATE SOLUTION: Solution to get programs running but keep it otherwise under "sleep" mode in Avast (I had to do this with my university's VPN service which Avast constantly shutdown...after 8 hours of troubleshooting I figured it out) *****(NOTE: This is just a temporary fix-action, but won't change the Avast Cleanup setting of putting the program to sleep afterwards. You will have to repeat this temporary fix-action on every login/user session when you want to use the program. In my case, if I did not do the settings change within Cleanup itself (see QUICK SOLUTION) then it would shutdown my VPN after 2 minutes of it running):

1. Run Task Manager as ADMINISTRATOR.

2. Once Task Manager opens, go to "Startup" tab and locate your program. Check the status, it should say "Disabled". Right click and hit "Enable". You can close this window.

3. Now, open Services as ADMINISTRATOR

4. Locate your program in the list and in the "Startup Type" column you should see "Disabled" and the column left to that (Status) should be blank.

5. Right click, hit "Properties". In the first tab that you'll be sent to ("General") you'll see in the middle of the window "Startup type:" and a drop-down menu. It should be showing "Disabled". Click on the drop-down menu and select "Automatic". Hit "Apply " button in the bottom right corner, then "Ok" to close the window.

6. RIGHT CLICK on the program in the Services list once more! And select "Start" (If you don't do this, it still won't run. Because up to this point you have only changed the Startup settings, but have not enabled it to run in this open user session). Once you hit Start a window will pop up and then close, and voila. You're running.

You should now be able to run your program. If you have issues while running the program again, run Services as an Administrator and when you right click once more on the program you'll see action buttons "Start..Stop..Pause..Resume..." If they are not grey'd out, then use these. If the are grey'd out, then go into Properties and repeat step 5.

THE PROBLEM THAT REMAINS is you will need to do this EVERY TIME. Also, in my case, Avast Cleanup still persists in shutting off my VPN and putting it to "sleep" after its been on for more than 2 minutes. So without being able to "wake" it in the Cleanup program itself, your only option might be to have to uninstall Cleanup altogether and just get rid of it.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2018, 11:04:32 AM by bhaggs11 »

Offline Stellarman

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2018, 09:59:24 AM »
QUICK SOLUTION:  Within Avast Cleanup, click on "Speed up" icon. Open "Background & startup programs". Scroll to the bottom of the list, find the green font that says "# programs sleeping" and click on it. Find your program on the list and click "wake". If it's not on the list, see an Alternate temporary work-around in the next paragraph:

ALTERNATE SOLUTION: Solution to get programs running but keep it otherwise under "sleep" mode in Avast (I had to do this with my university's VPN service which Avast constantly shutdown...after 8 hours of troubleshooting I figured it out) *****(NOTE: This is just a temporary fix-action, but won't change the Avast Cleanup setting of putting the program to sleep afterwards. You will have to repeat this temporary fix-action on every login/user session when you want to use the program. In my case, if I did not do the settings change within Cleanup itself (see QUICK SOLUTION) then it would shutdown my VPN after 2 minutes of it running):

1. Run Task Manager as ADMINISTRATOR.

2. Once Task Manager opens, go to "Startup" tab and locate your program. Check the status, it should say "Disabled". Right click and hit "Enable". You can close this window.

3. Now, open Services as ADMINISTRATOR

4. Locate your program in the list and in the "Startup Type" column you should see "Disabled" and the column left to that (Status) should be blank.

5. Right click, hit "Properties". In the first tab that you'll be sent to ("General") you'll see in the middle of the window "Startup type:" and a drop-down menu. It should be showing "Disabled". Click on the drop-down menu and select "Automatic". Hit "Apply " button in the bottom right corner, then "Ok" to close the window.

6. RIGHT CLICK on the program in the Services list once more! And select "Start" (If you don't do this, it still won't run. Because up to this point you have only changed the Startup settings, but have not enabled it to run in this open user session). Once you hit Start a window will pop up and then close, and voila. You're running.

You should now be able to run your program. If you have issues while running the program again, run Services as an Administrator and when you right click once more on the program you'll see action buttons "Start..Stop..Pause..Resume..." If they are not grey'd out, then use these. If the are grey'd out, then go into Properties and repeat step 5.

THE PROBLEM THAT REMAINS is you will need to do this EVERY TIME. Also, in my case, Avast Cleanup still persists in shutting off my VPN and putting it to "sleep" after its been on for more than 2 minutes. So without being able to "wake" it in the Cleanup program itself, your only option might be to have to uninstall Cleanup altogether and just get rid of it.

Hi,

did I get it correctly that you put to sleep your VPN client using Cleanup and now you are not able to revert it back by clicking on "Wake" because you could not find the VPN in the "Background & startup programs" list?
Or how did you get into the situation you described above?

I am just asking because Cleanup really shall not mess with programs on its own until user specifically selects some of them and put them to sleep. Although according to what you described it seems that there is a problem with waking up the VPN client and I would like to know more about it so we can fix that issue.

Also if you could provide us with logs from you machine so we can look at them to be able to analyze the issue we would really appreciate that!

Application logs files are stored here: c:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Tuneup\log, we would need ALL files from this folder.
Setup logs files are stored here: c:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp, in this folder look for a file named like this Setup Log 2018-01-30 #001.txt.
Then you can pack everything into a zip archive and either upload them to a favourite file server of yours or you can use our public FTP server for the purpose:ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming/ (login: anonymous).

Thank you for your cooperation.

REDACTED

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #10 on: April 25, 2018, 06:30:16 PM »
There is not a cut and dry way to awake sleeping programs.  I do not find the speed up icon or any way to wake up PDF

Offline jennifer.frei

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #11 on: April 22, 2019, 02:44:09 AM »
The same thing happened to me. I used the instructions above on March 17th to wake up programs and removed them all and my Microsoft Outlook starting working again. This is a silly feature and does not work as intended and caused me quite a bit of research until I found this thread. Thank God it can be reversed. I won't be using it again and will probably remove Avast Cleanup Premium

Offline Stellarman

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2019, 02:42:50 PM »
The same thing happened to me. I used the instructions above on March 17th to wake up programs and removed them all and my Microsoft Outlook starting working again. This is a silly feature and does not work as intended and caused me quite a bit of research until I found this thread. Thank God it can be reversed. I won't be using it again and will probably remove Avast Cleanup Premium

Hi,

we apologize for your troubles it is definitely not the intended behavior of our product.

We still don't know why it happens so we would really appreciate the logs from your PC.

You can simply send them by executing our log collector utility from this path C:\Program Files (x86)\AVAST Software\Avast Cleanup\tulogcollector.exe assuming that you have still Avast Cleanup installed on your computer.
Just please add your email address there so we can join the logs with your report here.

Thank you.

Offline Angie56

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #13 on: September 11, 2019, 06:31:33 PM »
I just elected to let AVAST put all my background programs to sleep as it indicated they would wake up any time I want to use them.  This is NOT happening, and now I can't use any of the programs I use on a daily basis!  And I work from home.  What I do to get access to all my documents now?  Get iCloud to transfer photos as it has been doing for 3 years?  I am kicking myself that I believed that this would be OK to do!!

Offline Guide16

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Re: Putting Background Processes to Sleep With Avast
« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2019, 10:08:39 AM »
Have had the same problems. I have fought with word not opening for days, have tried everything including trying to find out if it was a problem with Avast tune up. But Avast when trying to find out the sleeping programs just went round and round forever with nothing happening. Today I decided to uninstall Avast tune up and guess what everything has started again including Word. Has this been a waste of money