Winword 2007 hangs with VPS 080220-0

[zaure]

Home configuration:

Pentium D920, 2GB RAM.
Win XP Pro SP2 Updated.
MS Office 2007 (No SP1)
Visual Studio 2005 (No SP1)
Avast 4.7 Home Edition
Dec2007 (4.7.1098)

Facts:

1 - Yesterday, avast updated the virus definitions (VPS) and since then, Winword hangs when I open one of my old documents (Word 97 format) but works fine with some other documents in Office 2007 format (*.docx).

2 - When this problem occurs, the process ashServ.exe takes SYSTEMATICALLY 50% of my CPU resources (I have a Dual Core).
In other situations, ashServ.exe CPU usage is very low.

3 - If I stop avast resident protection, it has no effect. Winword still hangs. ashServ is still taking one full CPU.

4 - I can not kill WINWORD.exe. Actually, Winword never stop even thought I see the standard windows "Terminate process" "send report to MS" and so on .

5 - If I kill ashServ.exe, everything comes back to normal, except I have no more resident protection :

6 - I reproduce this behaviour systematically on my home PC.

7 - I was also able to reproduce this behaviour on an other machine (An AMD athlon based machine)

8 - This problem does not occur with an older version of Winword (Office 2003) even if avast is running with the last VPS.

9 - This problem does not occur with Winword 2007 if avast is not installed!

I guess this has to do with the last VPS. Don't you think so? ;-)

Regards

[igor]

Would it be possible for us to get the mentioned .doc file?

[zaure]

Sorry but this document is confidential. Not really my homework!

I'll try to reproduce this issue with another one and keep you informed.

[zaure]

I was able to extract the problematical part from the original doc.
I renamed it in .txt file to avoid filters on your site.

Here it is.

Please rename it as .doc file.

[kubecj]

The file you attached is invalid. Avast passes it in on-demand scan on local drive without any problem, I tried also on-demand, both Words I have here just complained on incomplete file.

[zaure]

Ok, let's try the same doc but renamed with a jpg extension.

[zaure]

Just for information
Winword.exe version: 12.0.4518.1014 (october 2006)

[kubecj]

Works for me. We need additional tests. So,

a) scan the file with avast, on demand mode from local disk. Does it hang?
b) open the file with word already opened, from local disk. Does it hang?

If both the tests won't hang, try that on the network volume.

Please let us know then.

[zaure]

Results:

The on demand analysis does not fail. No virus found.
The second test leads to a hang. Word opened, when loading the test document, it immediately hangs (freezes).
The sole solution for me is to kill ashServ.exe after what winword resumes normally and the document is correctly displayed.

I did not test a network volume as the local test lead to a hang.

Additional remarks:
If I convert the failing document in docx format. Winword does not hang anymore.
One of my colleague said he was able to reproduce it on its machine at home.

[zaure]

Thanks for the VPS update which seems to fix this issue.