Need tech advice - 2 OS on hard drive -Avast not working properly

[puter illit]

Hi, I'm running into some problems since I installed "Avast Home" on New hard drive. I asked for assistance before installing but there still seems to be a glitch.

OK, I'm running XP Pro/Vista Ultimate with a 320 -7200 RPM hard drive
I am rarely on Vista.
I intially was told to install Avast on both Drives, which I did. But as time went on I noticed when I ran a scan on XP Pro it included My E drive (vista)  Not sure why this is happening as each install should run independantly on each drive  so I never bothered to register the Vista install only XP Pro's. The Vista's expired and I did nothing.

Now I'm noticing Avast is not perform scan's correctly - error messages on scan "unable to scan files" (AAVM-scanning error: x_AavmCheckFileDirectEX:unhandled exception!,7C3A497A).
Did a boot time scan and same thing Can't scan from safe mode as it only allows me to open in Vista . So I do not think Avast is working correctly. I want to uninstall & reinstall Avast. But now not sure if I have to uninstall both drives , reinstall only XP's, if I do that I won't have avast running when I'm on Vista or atleast know if it's running as the icon's won't be there.

Please advise

[DavidR]

1. because you are asking it to scan 'all local drives' if you didn't want it to do that you would use the 'Folder select' option and only select the C drive. Personally this is a mistake it is just as well to do the one scan, be it in XP of from a Vista boot that scans all drives.

2. don't worry about these as they aren't very user friendly but verbose details helpful to Alwil support staff. I don't go poking around in the logs (that is one reason) unless I'm experiencing problems that display errors to the screen and this one wouldn't.

3. What do you mean you can't scan from safe mode ?
avast doesn't run in safe mode you have to start it, commonly using the avast desktop icon or directly using the ashAvast.exe file in the avast4 folder.

4. I don't know if there is a problem that warrants a reinstall, mainly because there is a lack of information about what the problem is.

Even then you would only need to reinstall whichever install XP or Vista is giving a problem as they are totally isolated and independent of one and other.

[puter illit]

1. because you are asking it to scan 'all local drives' if you didn't want it to do that you would use the 'Folder select' option and only select the C drive. Personally this is a mistake it is just as well to do the one scan, be it in XP of from a Vista boot that scans all drives.

2. don't worry about these as they aren't very user friendly but verbose details helpful to Alwil support staff. I don't go poking around in the logs (that is one reason) unless I'm experiencing problems that display errors to the screen and this one wouldn't.

3. What do you mean you can't scan from safe mode ?
avast doesn't run in safe mode you have to start it, commonly using the avast desktop icon or directly using the ashAvast.exe file in the avast4 folder.

4. I don't know if there is a problem that warrants a reinstall, mainly because there is a lack of information about what the problem is.

Even then you would only need to reinstall whichever install XP or Vista is giving a problem as they are totally isolated and independent of one and other.

to Reply 1. I do that and scan only C drive mostly occasionally both

to reply 2. I'm not as worried about those errors as I am that running a normal manual scan it's said NOTHING was scanned item by item of all programs & files. Which is what propted me to do a boot scan

to reply 3. If I shut the computer down to open in Safe Mode it will only open to Vista (e DRive) don't know why but I've tried it a couple of times and it won't let me run in SM in XP.
"commonly using the avast desktop icon or directly using the ashAvast.exe file in the avast4 folder" I'm not sure how to do these!!! No tap from desktop Icon to run in safe mode, only know how to do a boot scan which I thought is Safe mode.  Never used folder or .exe file??

to reply 4. when attempting to run avast scan it 1st loaded but disappeared and was running somewhere in the background seemingly attached to yahoo messenger. and windows locked up. Closed messenger and relaunched and it ran but said unable to scan on all the system files & folders. So than I closed everything and ran it from a boot scan - same results with the error message I included before. NOTHING was scanned! although it ran for almost 1 hour. I did a manual update, program Update and went into control panel and did a repair - same results. So if nothing can be scanned how can Avast be checking if there is a virus???

Now as for why I checked in the first place: My PF memory usage has been going a bit bunkers, and I suspect it's programs like Avast, Ccleaner (also checks both drives) and maybe something else, not sure what, that's running in the background on both drives there not supposed to.

Question* regarding reinstall: this is were I'm confused. Yes both drives should be independant
and avast should only be running "on access scanner" on XP when I'm open in XP but I don't think that's happening. I've also noticed  that on acess say's 6 providers are running but IM, internet mail, p2p shield, shows "Blank" for last scanned,infected,O- scanned count or infected count. Not to concerned there is no infected but How do I know if No Scans have been performed????either on access or on demand.

[DavidR]

1. I can only assume that it would only scan the E drive when you have selected all drives or when you just select that.

2. I really am in the dark on a) what you mean by a normal scan and b) exactly what you mean by nothing was scanned.

avast lists files that can't be scanned and it also gives a reason why they can't be scanned, but it doesn't say 'nothing' was scanned. The list only includes what couldn't be scanned there will obviously be those that have been scanned which wont be listed.

3. By booting into safe mode, since there is no selection of dual-boot, I would assume that it boots into the default, which I would presume is Vista. This as far as I'm aware has nothing to do with the fact that avast is installed, but an OS issue and Dual boot.

Safe mode is just windows running at a low screen resolution (no video graphics drivers loaded) and in a condition with many applications and functions disabled so that there is a high likelihood that it will boot 'safely.' So other than that it operates normally e.g. with partitions, folders, files, etc. So I believe you have a misconception of what safe mode is.

4. Sorry you have lost me, the on-demand scan doesn't run in the background and certainly not in yahoo messenger

5 each avast installation is linked to the windows registry in the particular drive of the OS it is installed in.

You can only run one OS at a time, so there would only be one occurrence of avast running on-access scan. That is why if there is a problem it only relates to the OS installation you are running.
When XP is running, is there an avast 'a' icon in the system tray ?

What avast processes are running in Task Manager, they begin with ash or asw, see image ?