ashdisp.exe problem

I’m using avast under winnt4.0 SP 6a, but my computer now is often nearly hanging up ( ie. for example wheel mouse scrolling doesn’t work anymore, opening task-manager takes a lot of time) but when i kill ashdisp.exe via task-manager ( only if I get it work) all is again working well. If I don’t get task-manager work, I have to log out - but here a message window pops up, telling some problem with aswdisp.exe???, where I’m asked to kill this task.

does anybody know about this, please help

Hello,
I’m running avast 4 under Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP SP1.
At first reboot, all works fine.
After the second reboot, the system freezes just after loading avast.
The boot doesn’t continue and the other programs that are in the Run key of HKey_Current_User are not loaded.
Sometimes, I can run Task Manager to kill ashdisp.exe and then the boot continue normally.
In the other case, I just have to reset manually the computer.
This problem occurs with both configurations.
1 - Windows 2000 SP3 (Athlon 1 GHz).
2 - Windows XP Home SP1 (Pentium 4 2.4 GHz).
Is there a solution to this pb ?

Please, inform a list of posible incompatible applications on your computers (spy blockers, another antivirus, firewalls…). The foruns members could help you to happiness :smiley:
avast works very well on my XP Pro (256Mb RAM) ;D
No problems at all…

did u try avast on W98se or windows2000pro?
technical

did u try on w98se or w2kpro?
technical

I had the same problem.

Sometimes, I can run Task Manager to kill ashdisp.exe and then the boot continue normally.
I haven't been so lucky anytime ...
In the other case, I just have to reset manually the computer. This problem occurs with both configurations. 1 - Windows 2000 SP3 (Athlon 1 GHz). 2 - Windows XP Home SP1 (Pentium 4 2.4 GHz). Is there a solution to this pb ?
My CFG - Athlon XP 2100, 512 MB DDR, XP Proff. SP1 + latest actualization.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run:

atiptaxx.exe - some ATI driver
ashDisp.exe
ashMaiSv.exe
dumprep 0 -k
NeroCheck.exe

What I did is that I moved these two ash*.exe to normal Windows startup folder and after that had this problem no more until new version of Avast restored its settings. I understand that this may downgrade the antivirus power, but it works and is much less painful than resetting more often than every second boot.

to developers : What about to implement some mechanism that will supervise Avast startup process and detect these freezings ? What are the weaknesses of having Avast started from regular startup folder instead of from the “Run” key ? Just to keep the common user’s hands off ?

Theoretically, it should make no difference if the program is started from the StartUp folder or from the Run key. In my opinion, in the StartUp folder it would only confuse some users, and besides that, as you say, some users may e.g. disable it by mistake…

If there is a difference between those 2 startup methods, there is a problem with the order of the application startup (the order is probably changed when you move avast from the Run key to the StartUp folder). However, Windows are not a deterministic system - the order of the application startup is (can be) different on each boot anyway. I.e. even when you say it works now, when you moved avast to the StartUp folder, I don’t think it’s 100% reliable. Besides, for other users it might work with the Run key, and cause problems when in Startup folder.

Could you try e.g. to temporarily disable the other startup items (and keep avast as it was)? Maybe you’d find what is causing the conflict… And maybe try some more exhaustive “startup dump” (there are many more keys, similar to the “Run” one).

To make myself clear: your method is certainly a nice trick. If there is a conflict, however, we would like to find out what the conflict is and fix it “properly”.

According to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article - 179365 I checked all of the keys involved and found just one more entry - ctfmon.exe ( some Alternative User Input Services ) Current state suits me well since some of my startup items ( f.e. ssh tunnels ) are not blocked at startup and connect perfectly ( this was not true before since apparently Avast was blocking the network access for some time ). Anyway I will do the test you proposed and will come back with the results. Hopefully needed restarts will not destroy my system …

As far as this may be not Avast’s fault, it is worth to find a mechanism to avoid these problems … counting on this may even not be possible under such OS …

There are probably no problems under Linux ( not just thanks to /etc/rcX.d/SXX… ) … but I’m too lazy to take care of it at home when administering tens of them at work … :wink:

I’m not saying that it’s not an avast! problem - of course, it’s possible; but since the order of the application startup is really kind of “random” in windows, I’m a little sceptic about the reproducibility and possibility to find & fix the error :frowning:

Are you sure that avast blocked access to network resources, other than POP/SMPT/IMAP, on startup? If yes, I think it’s again some kind of problem with (concurent) network library initialization - because as far as I know, avast doesn’t have anything to do with SSH etc.

Hmm, when starting Avast from registry, I always got the connection error with my SSH tunnel ( started from startup folder ). After some time ( 10 seconds ) manual restart of the tunnel used to solve this.

It’s good to say( but should not interfere ), that I’m using the tunnel for my mail as well:

mail client at home → avast mail guard → ssh tunnel to office intranet → intranet mail server.