I installed Avast free on about four identical Windows 98SE systems.
Two of them work flawlessly. The other two systems worked perfectly, until installing Avast. One of those machines I swapped hard drives with another identical drive with Windows already installed. Avast worked fine after doing that.
I installed Avast on yet another identical machine. Machine worked perfectly prior to Avast. Now that machine keeps crashing. I pulled out the drive and replaced it with the drive from the first machine that Avast crashed as I had put a different drive in that one. I reformatted the hard drive, loaded Windows 98 and all drivers as I have reformatted these machines many times before. I updated it to the latest IE 6 available with all security updates that are out for Win98se. I also installed Firefox, latest 2.0.18 that works with Windows 98. Everything worked perfectly. I powered down, installed Avast free, and now it's crashing just as the other drive / machine did.
After powering up, it will usually boot to the desktop, but if I wait very long, try to update Avast Windows will crash. Here's the error I get:
Windows
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A fatal exception 0D has occurred at 00:28:C00015E1.
No errors until installed and configuring Avast (just set to pick permanent Internet connection). Also attempted to update definitions.
I will also mention after the crashes on the 2nd machine that crashed, I did notice the hard drive was a bit noisy when it ran Scandisk after the machine wasn't powered down correctly. Reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows did not reveal and physical hard drive problems. I also find it odd the both machines with these drive worked perfectly, for a long time, prior to Avast so i'm not thinking it's cause for the hard drives being worn out.
Thanks for any help.
