[2015.10.3.2223] Avast prevents chkdsk to run

NON · 2015-07-19T04:58:38.000Z

Hello all,

I got a report at Japanese Forum that claims latest Avast (2015.10.3.2223) prevents chkdsk to run. He/She uses Win7 64bit.
I also confirmed this behavior on my Win7 64bit but not on Vista 32bit.

The error message chkdsk showing was “Access was denied due to lack of enough privilege”, although I had chkdsk run on Administrative privilege.
I suspect HIPS is the culprit, but disabling shields does not solve this.

Does someone confirm this? And is there any ways to resolve this?

mchain · 2015-07-19T06:45:28.000Z

Just ran chkdsk on three internal drives in Win 7 64-bit Home and no issues. Suggest restoring HIPS to default settings and see if there is a difference.

Settings>Active Protection>File System Shield>Sensitivity

abruptum · 2015-07-19T09:11:19.000Z

I don’t think HIPS is the culprit. I believe it is new NG.
I can’t fully defrag C disk (2 % fragmented) because of .dat file (1 GB) in NGBase folder in Program Data.

Asyn · 2015-07-19T10:45:23.000Z

FWIW, no problems on XP here.

system · 2015-07-19T19:54:36.000Z

I’ve had this problem too on a 64 bit Windows 7 machine. I’ve suffered a few BSODs recently (itself unusual) and tried running chkdsk on restarts but they failed (or rather autochk wasn’t allowed to run). I was also finding the NgBase snapshot .dat file was growing larger and larger by the day and it wouldn’t allow me to defragment it either. When the snapshot file got to 1.4GB I decided that I’d had enough of the Ng/Virtual Machine feature and uninstalled it after advice from this forum (by using Control Panel, then selecting ‘Change’ for Avast in ‘Programs and Features’ and deselecting ‘Secure Virtual Machine’). I can now run chkdsk.

Lisandro · 2015-07-19T20:52:48.000Z

I know this is not a solution, but a workaround: you can run Deffraggler at boot time: https://www.piriform.com/defraggler
You can also boot in Safe Mode (and/or at a command prompt) and run chkdsk from there.

system · 2015-07-19T22:13:13.000Z

I’d requested a chkdsk whilst in Safe Mode and it just scheduled it for when I rebooted (albeit not trying to boot into Safe) which is when chkdsk failed to run because of the Ng/VM implementation. The fact that you can’t easily defrag the NgBase snapshot file and it growing in size daily, plus the chkdsk failure scenario was enough for me to take the decision to uninstall Secure Virtual Machine - a feature that I’d not known about until these problems started appearing - a pity I wasn’t given the option to select/deselect this feature during the recent Avast 2015 upgrade.

system · 2015-07-19T23:46:05.000Z

I also am unable to run chkdsk or defrag to completion. I have Win 7 home 64 bit (Dell 8300 XPS). My solution is to install one of my backup images (using Macrium Reflect) before I got the latest avast update and wait until avast finds a solution to this problem before I update again. I’m relieved to see that I’m not the only one with this problem. I know that avast has a good reputation to maintain and will certainly come up with a fix soon.

CaptHastings · 2015-07-20T03:01:41.000Z

Hi all,

I’m posting to say that I have also encountered this problem, and managed to figure out to deselect the ‘Secure Virtual Machines’ selection in the change/uninstall area in Control Panel > Programs and Features (which Howard14 already posted - I should have checked here first).

I’m running Win 7 Pro SP1 32-Bit.

Eddy · 2015-07-20T03:19:36.000Z

Best thing to do is running chkdsk at boottime.

NON · 2015-07-20T06:35:04.000Z

Thank you everyone, so it seems this is caused by new NG.

It’s true that I have NG enabled in my Win7.
I also have NG enabled in my Vista, but maybe the NG environment is still under preparation (I checked this just after updating Avast) and thus no issue is caused by it.

As suggested by mchain I tried to restore HIPS settings to default but no avail.

I hope chkdsk will be work again, as it is one of the system function, and IMO chkdsk is more important than System Restore.

abruptum · 2015-07-20T12:41:10.000Z

I removed NG/SVM also. Too many problems.
I’ll wait for the next version.

jedi.khan · 2015-07-28T13:55:05.000Z

Well, good to see that there are reports of this issue on the forums. I called up avast tech support yesterday and the person I talked to said my call was the first they’ve heard of the issue. It took me a little while to get the message thru though. At first the person I was talking to thought chkdsk was a third party program and wanted me to create an exception in the firewall and/or refer to the avast user manual. Once I got the message through that chkdsk (I was referring to it as disk check) was a built in Windows tool and that it was running during the boot up process, when nothing else should be using the hard drive, the person was like “Yeah, that’s odd. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the Free version.” They resent my license file for IS, so I went ahead and uninstalled avast completely and reran chkdsk in boot up. It ran fine without issue. Then installed avast free and did the same, except chkdsk reported that a software package was in the way and it couldn’t run.

I plan on calling them again later to let them know that it’s still a problem, and to also point out that it’s been reported on the forums. If avast tech support and/or the devs don’t look at these forums, they really should.

DavidR · 2015-07-28T14:02:38.000Z

@ jedi.khan
What is your operating system and do you have MBAM Premium installed ?

If so see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174229.0 similar issue with chkdsk.

jedi.khan · 2015-07-28T15:24:15.000Z

DavidR post:14:

@ jedi.khan
What is your operating system and do you have MBAM Premium installed ?

If so see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174229.0 similar issue with chkdsk.

I have two computers, a desktop and a laptop, that have the same issue. Both running Windows 7 64-bit. And I don’t know what MBAM Premium is, so no, I don’t have it installed.

I discovered the issue on my desktop, which I use regularly. The laptop I hadn’t turned on in over a month, and both computers are running mostly the same programs, with the exceptions being OEM software that came with the laptop. Unfortunately, since I use the desktop regularly, programs and other stuff get updated regularly, and I only run chkdsk about once a month. So I used my laptop as a test platform, since I knew nothing on it had changed in the last month or so.

First thing I did was run chkdsk on the laptop with no changes as a control. It ran fine, no issues. Then I used Windows Update and got the latest patches. No issues. Then I updated Avast to version 10.3.2223. Ran chkdsk and it failed, saying that a recent program install was causing an error. So, I had my culprit. The only change on the laptop between a time when chkdsk worked and when it didn’t was updating Avast to it’s current version.

And to verify, I did as I mentioned before. Uninstalled Avast, ran chkdsk again, with success. Then reinstalled the Free version, and chkdsk failed. It doesn’t matter if it the Free or paid version of Avast, as chkdsk didn’t work with either of them installed as of update 10.3.2223

system · 2015-07-28T15:36:05.000Z

Howard14 post:5:

I’ve had this problem too on a 64 bit Windows 7 machine. I’ve suffered a few BSODs recently (itself unusual) and tried running chkdsk on restarts but they failed (or rather autochk wasn’t allowed to run). I was also finding the NgBase snapshot .dat file was growing larger and larger by the day and it wouldn’t allow me to defragment it either. When the snapshot file got to 1.4GB I decided that I’d had enough of the Ng/Virtual Machine feature and uninstalled it after advice from this forum (by using Control Panel, then selecting ‘Change’ for Avast in ‘Programs and Features’ and deselecting ‘Secure Virtual Machine’). I can now run chkdsk.

Thanks for the tip

system · 2015-07-31T14:40:34.000Z

I agree with all of the above. Win 7 Pro, 64 bit. I tried turning off Shields to reboot and run chkdsk. Did’t work. Then I tried safe mode. Didn’t worlk, so I finally uninstalled Avast Internet security and it rand fine. After reboot, chkdsk ran fine. Then I re-installed paid Avast IS. That’s a pain. So now I am going to try the elimination of the Virtual setting. But Avast really should react and fix the problem, as this only started after the latest update. Do they read these notes on their own forum?
So far, it doesn’t look like it.
By the way, the security letters required to post these are barely legible.!

system · 2015-08-04T00:38:19.000Z

This problem has appeared since version 2223, i contacted technical support to report their, they said they were going to investigate. :

system · 2015-08-04T02:07:02.000Z

Okay I tried check disk on my win 7 64 bit system with avast version 10.3.2223 and it would not run. I did an avast clean install to version 10.3.2218 and now check disk works.

I was going to do win10 update but now I feel I must wait till avast is truly fixed.

mchain · 2015-08-05T10:44:16.000Z

Aysn provided this link: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174286.msg1240137#msg1240137

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