I have been using Avast home for years and have never had a problem. I am greatfull for that........But....I don`t get what happened to such a great company ?? I built a new system a few weeks ago. My 1st stop was Avast of course.....5 was up and it looked good to me. I am running windows 7 64 bit. Downloaded and installed fine and I was happy as could be. A few days ago booted up and as Avast was getting def`s and pow Blue Screened.....I was shocked. Nothing would work after that.......just kept getting packages broken. Tried to fix in add and remove no go. Came to this forum and read about the problems with 5. I read that 5.0.396 would fix these problems so I un-installed from add and remove. Then reinstalled from Cnet.....all started working fine and I was happy again. It updated def`s no-problem once again. Till tonight...booted up Avast got new Def`s and the POW Blue Screened again........Again everything was broken......5 is aparently not fixed.....why did they do this to such a good program.....if they are tring to weed out the free bees....just say so and charge a small fee. I would have been glad to pay for how good Avast used to be. Now......I guess I`m out looking for a good Virus program again.....Peter
I can’t address your problems specifically, but you should be aware that
avast! 5 can, and sometimes does, apply program patches dynamically and
(usually) silently during VPS updates. So sometimes more than just the
signatures are being updated. This is separate and distinct from a program
version update. Unfortunately, there is always an element of risk involved
in this procedure - a change to one of the program components could
cause a running instance to malfunction under some (possibly “fringe”)
configurations.
Immediately after one of the recent VPS updates, I clicked on the Firefox
icon in my taskbar and kaboom! Black screen, system reboot. No problems
after the reboot. Was it avast! and the update? Shrug. My system is usually
rock solid - runs for months if not years with no such symptoms.
If you can get a minidump from one of these crashes and submit it to Alwil
with details of your configuration, they might be able to isolate and
fix the problem for you.
Both times I touched nothing.......not a icon nothing.....both times the update window poped up in the lower right cornor. then pow Blue screened. Tried rebooting a million times to no avail. If I try to update def`s or program manually it starts up and the says Packages Broken. Only fix was to un-install and then re-install. This is a very basic windows 7 64 bit machine to run Photoshop. E8400 and 8 gigs of ram.....nothing "fringe" configurations about it. I don`t like blue screens on my new machine. Why can`t we get 4.8 till they work this out ??? I have always thought a lot of Avast and have spoken highly of them for a long time. Many people I have recomended Avast to are companies and they are running the pro versions.......I feel badly for them now. Very odd thing is Microsoft is finally putting out something worth buying and it seems like Avast is taking up Micrsofts old bad habits..........Peter ???
Waking
Can you tell me how to get a minidump and where to send it I would be glad to do this. I guess it is in my event logs…but this is new to me…but if you could help I would learn something and maybe help Avast at the same time…Peter
I’m running XP so am not certain where the minidumps are located under Win 7 64
or what their names are. Under XP they are in c:\windows\minidumps
and have names such as mini020110-01.dmp
I’ll have to poke around to find the particulars for Win 7 64 unless someone
using that OS jumps in here and volunteers the info.
Will post back with the uploading to avast! procedure.
Peter -
Please enter
dump 64 ftp
in the forums search box at the upper right, do a search, and read some of the recent
threads. They may have the info you need for submissions.
PAL10: please send me couple of your latest minidumps (\Windows\Minidump) folder to kurtin@avast.com, thanks.
Minidumps sent…thanks for the help pk and waking. Im curious whats up…Peter
Unfortunately, both bsods are not related to avast: it looks like a hw problem… you may try to uninstall avast and see if it helps.
Not wishing to be a naysayer but there is definitely something unpleasant going on with the new version (free). I’m a long-time user of Avast! and I installed version 5 on three PCs a couple of days ago. All three PCs are different brands and all have blue screened more than once with a “page fault” error. This error could only be resolved by recovering the PC back to the pre-Avast! restore point.
I don’t think hardware is to blame. Also a friend of mine installed Avast! Free and experienced the same problem. At this point, I uninstalled Avast! and installed another AV program…so far no crashes with it. When I see three (four counting my friend’s PC) have nearly identical problems, there is definitely some fire to go with the smoke.
I certainly want to continue using Avast! but this situation needs some serious attention and resolution before I would feel comfortable in trying it again. Thanks.
Make sure you have installed the .396 version and not an earlier version. What operating system? THE bsod’s ARE PRETTY MUCH GONE IN XP3 now, even with Powerdvd on your computer.
pk.....the dumps may point to hw...I don`t know I don`t understand them. But I don`t belive it is not related to Avast 5. When it trys to update and bsods it brakes Avast 5 and has to be re-installed to work. When I un-install 5 I have no bsods. That seems to me to be pointing to Avast 5....does it not seem that to you ?? This is machine has only had 2 now 3 bsods.....all of them when avast 5 was updating......Peter
An antivirus imposes certain stress on the computer (additional CPU and harddisk activity related to file scanning, compared to the situation without any antivirus), so hardware problems may appear when the antivirus is installed, even though the antivirus doesn’t cause them “directly”. Virus database updates are also CPU/disk intensive operations…
I’m not saying this is the case, but I’d say it’s worth to run a memory check… and possibly some CPU/graphics benchmarks (with avast! uninstalled) - to see if the hardware can handle the load.
I will run the tests.....It would be nice if it was something else. But E8400......8gb of ram....EVGA 240 card....WD 500 blacks..... plenty of power......Photoshop CS4 just flies.....if it is all working right I don`t see how your antivirus could be to much stress.....but I will do the tests.....Peter
Truly sounds like a conflict with one ofr two pieces of software or drivers and not really stressing the computer. PowerDVD did it to me in earlier versions
Ok ran memory check…ran hardware tests…checked hardware drivers…all seems fine but Avast 5…set updates to ask me when update is available. Will manually update a while after bootup…see if this makes any difference…
Jeffj…I am running .396 version…Windows 7 64 bit is the op. Their is not much on this machine and updated all drivers. I have been looking on other forums for other possible driver problems. Their have been problems with new Nvidia video drivers…but I`m using 1 back that everyone seems to say is good and had no problems with before. Still seems to be conected to Avast…I will see if disable auto update helps at bootup…Thanks for your reply…Peter
Good Luck. Sometimes it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The problem should be pretty much solved with yesterday’s virus definition update. It is recommended to reboot the computer though as some of the changes may not become effective until that.
A more systematic fix will be included in the next program update, released for the first half of next week.
Thanks
Vlk