Author Topic: Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore  (Read 3519 times)

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Stp121

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Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore
« on: June 12, 2010, 09:14:07 AM »
Hi 2All,
 Mostly, I'm very, very  :D at having found this thread cuz it answers about 3-4 months' worth of issues for me, so this is mainly intended for pk (?) and/or Alwil.  BTW, really sorry 4 endless length(4 months of frustration=a lot of vocab!)I have done FOUR "clean" installs of W7 x64 HP since purchasing Avast IS. The 1st x was due to avast's fw causing sys instability when running mem-intensive programs, but that was really "mea culpa," as I didn't verify driver's 64-bit compat prior to install of suite.  Since that 1st clean install, I've been using avast's free av. But I kept encountering perform. issues which an Intel Core i5, x64 arch. w/HypTh & 8 Gigs of DDR 3 installed RAM & storage capacity=1 TB should not be having.  Just after clean install, all's hunky dory, then slowly, steadily, it goes downhill from there.  Browsers, esp. IE, freeze after an hour or so, or else it "hangs" while attempting to open (always a fun game 2 play w/browsers).  And then it's WExplorer's turn to start acting up...I love seeing halved UI's!  But then the Really good part comes next.  I do a SysRestore,& when my OS shows  my dsktp once more, I get an "extra" w/it that says SysRestore was a pointless waste of both our times and nothing has been changed except logging of another error code (I'm paraphrasing, of course)  Then it suggests my AV might be culprit, so now I try restore w/Avast realtime scanner turned off or in "Safe Mode" or w/it off during creation of restore point, etc.,and then.......NOTHING!  well, I guess a black screen [OD] is actually a "something."  Then I try to recover my OS.  But it doesn't happen, and I do the clean install (at least W7 installs relatively quickly). 
   I wasn't even really looking for a solution via this forum since I've spoken to Avast Support many x & was told it wasn't faulting of their sw. As I'm sure you all know about MS's SysInternals tools, all I have 2 say is Thank you 'Autoruns'.  Turns out that in > c:\windows\system32\drivers\...there are a few drivers installed I did't know about, e.g., "aswRdr" aka avast! TDI Redirect driver or "aswMonFlt," aka avast! mini-filter driver or "aswSP," the driver for avast's self-protection module, the point being: you CANNOT run 32-bit drivers w/64-bit hardware! Ever!  Isn't that common-know or if not, shouldn't Support at least know?  These are not the type of drivers that Win7 displays in Device Manager (not a techie so I wouldn't know what 2 even watch for)& maybe it's my fault for not hunting around my registry for rogue 32-bit drivers & I admit it didn't even occur 2 me to think prog installed drivers for av too, but during my converses w/avast support, it might have been nice if someone had said something somewhere along the line.  Even if this isn't the root cause, after troubleshooting w/Support, I decided to just use AV part of sw & didn't req'st refund as it's really my prob 4 not confirming driver-compat.  But can't help wondering why they didn't bother to tell me about the av drivers?  Sure it was only $60.00 or so, but in a world where the OpenSource/GPL/Freeware can be just as good (note:avast free av), that I paid for security sw & got !@% really makes me  ??? & a bit  >:(.  Any recommends for 64-bit compatible (good) AV would be greatly appreciated   ;D

BTW, does anyone know if they're currently offering free upgrade to x64 avast IS - it's already paid for, I might as well use it.  Thnx (&  :-[) to anyone nice enuf to have read thru this post or who just had nuttin' better to do. 

Offline igor

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Re: Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2010, 09:46:58 AM »
Technically, it's not true that you cannot run 32bit drivers with 64bit hardware - you cannot run 32bit drivers in 64bit OS (but a 64bit hardware can run a 32bit OS).

Anyway, avast! is happily running on millions of 64bit systems, and of course it installs its 64bit drivers into the system (and yes, it installs quite a few drivers, just like any other antivirus with resident protection)... so why do you think you had 32bit drivers installed on your system?

There is no special x64 build of avast!, everything is covered by one installer that installs the necessary modules according to your OS.

Gargamel360

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Re: Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2010, 10:24:26 AM »
@OP
     I originally thought that the system32 folder was home to 32 bit programs/drivers, are you also thinking this?  This is not the case, if thats what you thought.

 

Offline wonderwrench

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Re: Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2010, 05:27:35 PM »
@OP
     I originally thought that the system32 folder was home to 32 bit programs/drivers, are you also thinking this?  This is not the case, if thats what you thought.

 

What was MS and AMD thinking? Lets keep 64 bit stuff in system32 and keep 32 bit stuff in syswow64. Makes no sense to me, shakes head.
I guess it really does not matter. They must have had a reason, maybe backward compatibility?
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Offline pk

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Re: Avast & System-wish-I-could-just-Restore
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2010, 06:49:02 PM »
What was MS and AMD thinking? Lets keep 64 bit stuff in system32 and keep 32 bit stuff in syswow64. Makes no sense to me, shakes head.
I guess it really does not matter. They must have had a reason, maybe backward compatibility?

You're right, it's due to the backwards compatibility with other applications. All existing apps could still rely that system DLLs are placed in %windir%\system32 folder, changing that to system64 folder could have difficult compatibility issues. If you run a 32-bit app under 64-bit OS (e.g. %windir%\syswow64\cmd.exe) and it opens %windir%\system32 folder, system will silently redirect it to %windir%\syswow64 folder (there's also 32-bit and 64-bit registry view, compare HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432node).