freeze

[jwall]

avast has recently caused my computer to freeze up, mouse not working etc.
I tried a repair and a clean uninstall and reinstall and still the same.

I've since removed avast and installed avira and everything is fine.
Avira found no virus and Malwarebytes and Super Antispyware found no problems.

Any ideas?

[scythe944]

How about running the removal tool of whatever AV you had previous to Avast?

[jwall]

I had been running avast for months and all was well until a few days ago.
All prior av's were completely removed.

During the freeze CPU=100% and it looked to be the avast GUI process

Thanks.

[jwall]

As soon as I start a scan with avast, the computer immediately freezes up.
With avast uninstalled, fine.
With another AV installed, fine.

[igor]

What exactly does it mean, "freeze"?
You say the computer is frozen, but you also say that avast ui process uses a lot of CPU - which you could hardly find out if the computer was really frozen... So how is that? Can you start other programs when it happens? Can you move the mouse cursor?

[jwall]

Mouse does not work.  Control alt delete brings up task manager and shows the processes.
Only way to get out of it is to reboot.

[bobo1]

Is Avast program in task manager. (AvastUI.exe) & at 100% cpu load under task manager?. Mine spikes up & down to this when the antivirus is updating only!. Is it doing it all the time after starting the computer from scratch?

[jwall]

Yes to both questions.  CPU hovers around 95-100%

Like I said, I'm pretty sure it's avast because even when I start a scan, it immediately freezes the mouse.

[jwall]

A lost cause, I guess.  I can't seem to nail down the problem and nobody here can help.
Time to move on.
Thanks for all the help.

[Lisandro]

We need to follow Igor's guidelines...
Freezing is a very difficult problem to diagnostic and find a solution. Generally related to conflicts (and rarely even with hardware/RAM issues).

[willofaustralia]

looking at the anti everything on this original OP's computer, I would have removed each and every one of those programs until I found the culprit___what did you say, Avast was the culprit !  I rest my case LOL    

[tbessie]

looking at the anti everything on this original OP's computer, I would have removed each and every one of those programs until I found the culprit___what did you say, Avast was the culprit !  I rest my case LOL    

I have had the exact same problem - Windows 7 Pro x64 running on a Lenovo x120e.

I've used Avast on Windows XP PRo x32 for years, but this was my first time trying it on Windows 7.  I installed it last night, and did the following:

1. Turned of ALL live scanning (I only wanted to use it for on-demand scanning)
2. Scheduled a boot-time scan
3. Rebooted

When the machine was done with the scan, and Windows booted, I put the computer to sleep.

In the morning I awoke it, and once I'd logged in, after some startup icons appeared in the system tray, explorer.exe just stopped responding to anything except the mouse moving.  Right-clicking anything did not response. Control-Alt-Delete did not respond. Pressing the 'windows' key did not bring up the Start Menu.  Nothing was responding.

A window appeared saying "The application is not responding, do you want to kill the process?" or something along those lines (not a very useful message, it didn't tell me WHAT process), but I couldn't click on the "OK" button.  Later on in my tests, when this happened, I was able to click on the "OK" button, explorer.exe appeared to restart, but the machine was still hung.

I rebooted the machine, ran a chkdsk /F in safemode, all the usual things.

Restarted, same problem.

Restarted again, same problem.

Restarted in Safe Mode, removed Avast (this is Avast Free, v6), rebooted, and, voila! Everything worked again.  The only wild card here was Avast.

It *looks* like Avast was possibly hogging system resources, or was interfering with explorer.exe startup.

- Tim

[tbessie]

Oh, I *will* add that I still left Microsoft Security Essentials installed and running (both during the install and afterwards).  I had assumed that turning off ALL live scanning by Avast would avoid any conflicts these two might have.

MSE did not complain about anything when I installed Avast or when it was running.

- Tim

[Asyn]

Oh, I *will* add that I still left Microsoft Security Essentials installed and running (both during the install and afterwards).  I had assumed that turning off ALL live scanning by Avast would avoid any conflicts these two might have.

MSE did not complain about anything when I installed Avast or when it was running.

You should have only one resident AV installed.

[DavidR]

Oh, I *will* add that I still left Microsoft Security Essentials installed and running (both during the install and afterwards).  I had assumed that turning off ALL live scanning by Avast would avoid any conflicts these two might have.

MSE did not complain about anything when I installed Avast or when it was running.

- Tim

No avast is designed as a resident antivirus as is MSE, and they both have low level drivers which will be running even when you disable the main protection.

If you really want to test resource use uninstall MSE, reboot and install avast. Then you can compare just how light avast is when it is not in a fight with other resident AVs. There are many such reports in the forums, when replacing (uninstalling) MSE with avast resource use was less.

Having two resident anti-virus scanners installed is one too many and not recommended as rather than provide twice the protection it can cause conflicts that could leave you more vulnerable. What you are/were seeing in explorer is a classic case of conflict.