Hi there! I recently installed Windows XP service pack 3 over two of my PCs. Both had been running XP Pro (SP2) and Avast Pro (4.8.1169) without a glitch. After the SP3 upgrade, everything seemed fine at first until yesterday I manually paused the Standard Shield for some reason. As expected, the XP security center warning msg (the little red shield with a white cross) popped up and I simply ignored it. After some while I turned on the Standard Shield again and expected the security center warning to disappear by itself. Nothing happened. I checked the active providers and it seemed the Standard Shield was still off. What was worse was that the system became extremely slow and soon stopped responding. I could only hold the power button to switch the PC off. Then I updated Avast to the latest version (4.8.1195), but the problem persisted on both of my PCs.
Any idea what could cause this problem? Or could anyone with SP3 please try this on your rig? Simply pause the Standard Shield and enable it again (with windows security center service running), and see if the system hangs? Thanks!