Unfortunately every time I start up my computer and my soundcard application tries to run, avast holds/scans it for a few minutes. I then have to disable>enable all shields for it to load otherwise I get no audio. This has never happened before whilst using the soundcard for years with various AV apps, and started immediately when I installed Avast.
The application is EmuPMixDSP.exe - a control interface for my E-MU 1820m soundcard. Three Creative Audio executables load at startup and work in the background for my soundcard - cthelper.exe, ctxfihlp.exe and mididef.exe. I think these assist in the loading of audio effects/plugins for the EmuPMixDSP.exe application, and mididef is for the driver.
I know the cthelper and mididef modify keys in the registry at startup at HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control.…
My PC:
Avast 5.0.677
p4 3.2
2GB Ram
p4c800e deluxe MBoard
Win XP Home SP3
That’s all the info I can think of for now, I hope it’s enough.
No I haven’t changed any settings at all actually. This started happening as soon as I installed avast
I found a link on the avast forum here from february where users where experiencing the same problem. Hopefully there’s a work request somewhere for avast techs to replicate this bug to find the cause!
It seems too risky a workaround to have an AV disabled at startup, I might have to try a different AV unfortunately. It might seem petty but it’s amazing how a little thing like having to disable>enable shields can get on your nerves!
Please, zip and upload the C:\Windows\Memory.dmp file to this anonymous ftp server and name it uniquely: ftp.avast.com/incoming. Avast will analyze it and report back to you in this thread or via email to you. In the meantime, we will continue to provide support to you. Thank you.
Unfortunately my machine won’t crash when I hold right Ctrl and hit Sroll Lock twice.
There are two possible reasons I have considered for this:
The signal on my wireless keyboard might be breaking up so that when I am pressing Scroll Lock the Ctrl key is not actually held down for both presses? Although I did try holding the keyboard next to the receiver and rapidly hit Scroll Lock!
When I choose Complete Memory Dump I get this message:
If the pagefilole on volume C: has an size of less than 2046 megabytes, then the system may not be able to create a debugging information file if a STOP error occurs. Continue anyway?
I choose yes of course, but is this message relevant?
Manual dump: when the machine is in stalled state, hold down the rightmost CTRL key, and press the SCROLL LOCK key twice. This will cause a machine to ‘blue-screen’ and dump of memory will start.
In notebooks without the right most CTRL key, see http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51847.msg440718#msg440718
I checked that link and I already had that registry entry with the value ‘1’.
I have been scowering the web for alternative ways to get the BSOD but the only alternative I have found is Kernel Debugging, which is out of my depth!
I also found a page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff545499.aspx that seems to imply there is no way to use this Right Ctrl + Scroll Twice feature on XP with a USB Keyboard? I thought I might as well try entering the registry value they suggested anyway, but to no avail. A snippet from the page is below:
Forcing a System Crash from the Keyboard
Most of the following keyboards can cause a system crash directly:
PS/2 keyboards connected on i8042prt ports
This feature is available in Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows operating system.
USB keyboards
This feature is available in:
*
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 if the hotfix available with KB 244139 is installed.
*
Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2 or later).
* Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1 if the hotfix available with KB 971284 is installed.
* Windows Server 2008 (with Service Pack 2 or later).
* Windows 7 and later versions of Windows operating system.
