Applications Hanging after update of Avast

I was advised to make my own thread about this issue, and I have attached the two Farbar logs, as well as the logs from the the MBR tool and Malwarebytes, even though they are not needed.

The main issue was various programs would hang on launch, and were not possible to close via Task Manager or even with Taskkill.exe (though the latter did say it was successful, but the processes remained in a hung state, and continued to hold onto the resources they had claimed during their attempts to run.)

Hardware all checks out. (Ran a full disk check a few days ago, ran processor diagnostics, and ran 4 full passes of Memtest 1.86+)

This system is in near-constant use, so it has had many updates and installations in the last month, however I ran through troubleshooting by removing individual programs as I suspected them, and narrowed the issue down to Avast itself.

I currently do not have Avast installed as a temporary measure, and to test if the issue has gone away, so the logs do indicate a competitor’s product installed on my machine. This is NOT the issue, it was not on my machine at the time of the issue!

Also, this machine has a full scan from Avast and Malwarebytes run on it weekly, so it’s very unlikely to have any undetected malware. (I even did some additional checks, such as a boot-time scan to verify there wasn’t anything when the issues cropped up.)

The issue that drew my attention to Avast being the problem was, on Friday morning, I launched a full scan at around 6AM (the logs are gone since I uninstalled the program…) and I checked around 11:30AM, and the scan had not progressed at all past 0%. The machine was responding so far as menus, the mouse, and such, so it hadn’t gone into a hard lockup, but definitely was not proceeding in any capacity. I rebooted the machine, and attempted to start a few programs, most of which hung up. I uninstalled Avast after finding another thread here that indicated a possible issue with 2016. I rebooted a few times and launched programs, nothing hung up with Avast removed. I cleaned up the registry and any remnants of Avast on the machine, and put a fresh install of it on. It seemed to work fine for several hours, but then today began with a bluescreen, and then the same program lockups as before. Of note, the FRST logs do not have any information on hangups other than Winamp, but I had Firefox, Pidgin, Skype, and Thunderbird also have similar such hanging issues… and would not allow termination through any of the usual means, aside from a reboot.

Essexboy is notified, there may be some hours before he his online

When you resolved the problem to Avast did you run Avastclear and then try a re-install ? As sometimes multiple updates can cause a hiccup

CAUTION : This fix is only valid for this specific machine, using it on another may break your computer

Open notepad and copy/paste the text in the quotebox below into it:

CreateRestorePoint: 2016-02-13 23:28 - 2016-02-13 23:28 - 00000000 ____D C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software 2016-02-13 23:28 - 2016-02-13 23:28 - 00000000 ____D C:\Program Files\AVAST Software 2016-02-12 19:11 - 2016-02-12 19:11 - 00003924 _____ C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\avast! Emergency Update Task: {43D32791-C2FF-4A4B-A0A0-60DBC7860DBF} - System32\Tasks\avast! Emergency Update => C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastEmUpdate.exe Task: {828D681E-7971-4EBB-8B97-A3964DBF307F} - System32\Tasks\AVAST Software\Avast settings backup => C:\Program Files\Common Files\AV\avast! Antivirus\backup.exe [2016-01-19] (AVAST Software) C:\Program Files\Common Files\AV\avast! Antivirus Reg: reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\IPSec\Policy\Local /f Reg: reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\IPSec\Policy\Local /f RemoveProxy: EmptyTemp: CMD: bitsadmin /reset /allusers

Save this as fixlist.txt, in the same location as FRST.exe

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73555776/FRSTfix.JPG

Run FRST and press Fix
On completion a log will be generated please post that

Alright, ran the script, here’s the result file.

OK Avast has now fully gone … Are you prepared to try again ?

Download Avast Uninstall Utility to your Desktop.
Download the correct version of Avast
Avast Free
Avast Pro
Avast Internet Security
Avast Premier
Disconnect from the net
Uninstall Avast via control panel

[]Run the uninstall tool and accept the reboot to safe mode
[
]Once complete reboot your system
[*]Reinstall Avast


I have just gone ahead and reinstalled. So far, I have not had any problems, but I will keep an eye out for issues.

It had seemed fine after previously uninstalling it, so I’m a little wary this time.

Let me know of any problems

I had it lock up again. I’m no longer sure what the cause is, whether it’s Avast or something else. I suspect it could be failing hardware that’s intermittent enough that diagnostics aren’t catching it, because I’ve tried everything. The issues did indeed start after Avast was updated, but perhaps it was coincidental, or perhaps having a real-time scanning program in place is pushing things just enough to cause a lockup.

Regardless, not sure I’m going to find the solution here, but I appreciate the help provided.

What are your system specs ???

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 740QM @ 1.73GHz 58 °C
Clarksfield 45nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Alienware
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
1024MB ATI AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series (Dell)
Storage
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000BEKT-75KA9T0 (SATA) 40 °C
Optical Drives
Optiarc BD ROM BC-5650H
Audio
IDT High Definition Audio CODEC

It’s not the latest, but it still holds it’s own compared to a lot of modern hardware.

Update: Didn’t mention that it’s an Alienware M15x, so it’s a laptop (in a manner of speaking, anyway.)

Unless there’s some hardware issues, the system certainly has more than enough power.
My laptop is also an older I7 with 4 Gig of ram but I’m running Windows 10 without problems.

Yeah. I suspect that the hard drive may actually be failing, and it’s not tripping SMART, but not failing during any sort of longer hardware tests, either.

What I can verify for sure is, it passes 4 full passes of Memtest 1.86+ (I stop it after that, because that takes 8+ hours) has no system file integrity issues, checkdisk comes up with no issues, burn-in test doesn’t find any video card errors, and I’ve gone through disabling most everything that isn’t required by the system to run.

The hard drive being 5 years old is sort of a red flag, though, so I may try that approach, though I haven’t seen any other indications of failure on it.

Hopefully you have and are maintaining a current image backup. Just in case. :slight_smile:

I have a full image from November, and I backed up my personal files overnight, so I should be set in the event anything happens.