Author Topic: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.  (Read 9427 times)

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TMAnonAnon

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Avast! Free Antivirus 5.1.889 locks up OEM XP Home SP2

Symptoms:
I click anything on the desktop or quicklaunch bar and the PC Freezes.
The Avast! animated icon also frozen, appears partially turned.
CTRL  + ALT + DELETE does nothing.  Even waited 5-10 minutes and no change.
Had to press the power button for 10 seconds to do a (hard) power off.

The only program I could run (by clicking it's tray icon) was Avast, which I clearly recall updating late yesterday afternoon.

Temporary Solution:
I found that permanently disabling the "File System Shield" gives the temporarily solution.
Stop the animated tray icon's yellow triangle & warning un-check: Settings, -> Status Bar, -> File System Shield

Notes:
I looked through several logs and see no indication of what happened, I tried using Avast's debug with no results.
After a lot of troubleshooting, cleaning registry, and reading posts on this forum I'd thought I'd post this in-case someone else had the same difficulties.

The only software that's been updated or changed in the past week is Avast 5.0.677 to 5.1.889.
Other installed security software: Comodo Firewall 3.5.57173.439, and SUPERAntiSpyware 4.46.1000


andru123

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2011, 10:36:40 PM »
another one bites the dust... ::)
There are 10000 topics like that on this very forum... welcome to the club :)

TMAnonAnon

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2011, 10:42:55 PM »
Thanks for the welcome.
I know what your saying, I saw a fair bit of that and it stopped me from updating from 5.0.677 earlier.

I did find a few similar posts but they seemed to be Win7 specific.
Some other posts that started to describe it but didn't have any details or just wandered and got lost.

shrug:


YoKenny

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2011, 11:32:34 PM »
Avast! Free Antivirus 5.1.889 locks up OEM XP Home SP2
Please see:
Support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 ends on July 13, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean31

XP SP3 has many Critical Updates and performance enhancements.

mr_twinky

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2011, 06:19:47 AM »
I had the same problem with v5.1.889 on XP.  See my post about the problem here and how I installed a previous version to get around the problem until Avast is fixed.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=70100.0

If it is fixed?  ???

Offline CraigB

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2011, 07:42:58 AM »
another one bites the dust... ::)
There are 10000 topics like that on this very forum... welcome to the club :)
You seem to repeat yourself alot in everyone elses thread's, either start up a thread of you own to solve your issues or go away and let other people get there problem's solved without your negativity.

Decker

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #6 on: January 29, 2011, 07:53:27 AM »
Um YoKenny I tried SP3 but it totaly removed the quick start and stopped all access to the internet.  ???
That was 2 or 3 years back and this SP2 PC has been just fine until this Avast update.

FYI Others have had SP3 problemss too
Quote
"Many XP users, including Steve Gibson, have found that installing XP's Service Pack 3 breaks their machines. Also, the official advice from Tech Support of this writer's OEM (Toshiba) is *not* to install SP3, and they do *not* support it."  forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4873


Thnks Mr twinky, I looked at the links in your link.   :-\
I had already tried unistalling Avast, then ran its removal tool, then cleanafterme from systeminternals then reinstalled Avast. theres a few reboots in there too.

I have the same problem as AnonAnon and the PC works with the all shields disabled.
And it also runsfine if just that top file shield is stopped and the rest below it are still on.
And after reading the links from Mr twinky, I guess I will install an older version of Avast for now.   :'(

BTW My setup is similar but my Avast AV auto-updates, I have Comodo Firewall at ver 4.1.150349.920, SuperAntiSpyware ver 4.26.1002 (I don't run SASW too often) and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware ver 1.50.1.1100. Also Im running on old 2.2Ghz P4 home build with XP Home 2002 SP2.


TMAnonAnon

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2011, 05:41:53 PM »
I scanned the PC and looked at files and the registry all weekend and found nothing.

But when I used sysinternals RootkitRevealer it gave a one weird entry.
And I wonder if it's the culprit for Avast to freeze the PC when "File System Shield" is enabled?   :-\

Anyways I posted the screen-shot on the SysInternals RootkitRevealer forum.  Search for this title:
  Weird null entry, Save to text file crashes RkR


Does any Avast user with the exact same problem and temp solution that I mention above have the same RootkitRevealer entry???   ???

YoKenny

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2011, 02:07:25 PM »
You are not going to get much help until you update to XP SP3.

Offline CraigB

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #9 on: February 01, 2011, 02:43:36 PM »
TMAnonAnon and Decker, do you both have defense + turned on or off in comodo firewall ? try turning off and reboot, can also try uninstalling the behaviour shield in avast.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2011, 02:46:49 PM by craigb »

yaro

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #10 on: February 01, 2011, 03:57:01 PM »
I am running g XP pro SP3 and had similar issues when after starting any application it was taking ages to load. Everything worked fine in safe mode though. I noticed that there is lots of paging in perfmon while it happens. In the end the solution was to uninstall Avast. A bit of a shame as I was using it for a good couple of years. I just spend to much time and money testing almost all the components of my PC to install Avast ever again.
yaro

Offline CraigB

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2011, 04:32:22 PM »
I am running g XP pro SP3 and had similar issues when after starting any application it was taking ages to load. Everything worked fine in safe mode though. I noticed that there is lots of paging in perfmon while it happens. In the end the solution was to uninstall Avast. A bit of a shame as I was using it for a good couple of years. I just spend to much time and money testing almost all the components of my PC to install Avast ever again.
yaro
You should have brought your problem's to the attention of the forum and we might have been able to help solve your issue's.

TMAnonAnon

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2011, 05:36:47 PM »
Quote
do you both have defense + turned on or off in comodo firewall ?
Comodo firewall is on safe mode, I had disabled it but the PC still froze on rebooting.
Comodo Defense+ was always disabled and there's 0 files awaiting review.

Quote
uninstalling the behaviour shield
I'm not understanding, is the Behavior Shield and File System Shield conflicting somehow?

I sure I had first tried stopping the Behavior Shield, and the PC kept freezing-up.
Currently, the PC runs fine with the File System Shield stopped permanently...


I'm doubting that the weird registry found by RootkitRevealer has anything to do with this (nothing from/on their forums).

Offline danny96

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2011, 05:42:59 PM »
another solution is degrade to avast 4.8
Real-time protection and Firewall: COMODO Internet Security 12.0.0.6810 -- Additional Protection: Web Of Trust, Ublock, NoScript, Malwarebytes Premium, Avast! Online Security, Hitman Pro -- OS: Windows 10

TMAnonAnon

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Re: Avast 5.1.889 locks up WinXP PC - Disabled File System Shield for now.
« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2011, 05:56:22 PM »
another solution is degrade to avast 4.8
Hmmm, I'd rather not go two steps back.   ;)


I had ignored yokennys SP3 comment, but as I recall SP3 stopped this old emachine from even booting to the desktop.
So, I just put back the disk image (I'd made just before SP3), and I never looked at SP3 since.

I'd hazard that I can assume the paid version of Avast will have the same problems?