Hello Everyone,
I have been using Avast Home Edition since few months and it was working quite fine until recently. There has not been much change in the system apart from the regular Avast updates. I know this is a problem caused by Avast, as I have spent a lot of time tracing the problem, which I am elaborating below.
System Specs:
Intel Celeron 1.1Ghz
Windows 2000 Professional,
Service Pack 4
IE 6
Comodo Firewall Pro (CFP) V 2.4.16.174 - Database V 2.0
Problem: Booting takes too long with Avast Home Edition installed. The desktop shows up eventually, but it's just unusable as nothing works. Moving the mouse pointer over the taskbar shows the hour glass endlessly. Seems like a conflict with Firewall.
Troubleshooting I did:
# My initial doubt was with CFP. So disabled the cmdagent.exe (COMODO Firewall Pro Application Agent). Left Avast as it is. Rebooted.
= System boots normally
# So I assume it is CFP that is causing trouble. So I uninstalled CFP. Rebooted.
= Normal booting again
# I installed PCTools Firewall. Avast remains as it is. Rebooted.
= Same problem recurs. System freezes after displaying the desktop. Moving the mouse pointer shows on taskbar shows hourglass infinitely.
# I uninstalled Avast. Installed AVG. Kept PCTools as it is. Rebooted.
= Normal booting.
# Since I prefer comodo, I uninstalled PCTools. Installed CFP again. AVG remains. Rebooted.
= Normal booting.
Also with these steps I carefully carried out a couple of registry cleanings for the uninstalled application.
It seems Avast conflicts with the firewalls and this MAY have caused because of the recent updates, though I am not sure.
I want to get back to Avast again, as I find it very decent application.
I would appreciate if experts can guide/help with the issue.
P.S: I also noticed after uninstalling Avast, it leaves back few entries in the registry. I am attaching a snapshot of RegSeeker.
Cheers!!