Ok, I’ve seen at avast site that there was an attempt to solve this problem at the 4.7.623 version. Ok… I installed avast 4.6.763 last week and everything was fine until 2 days ago, when the system becomes incredible slow to perform the shutdown (the “Windows is shutting down” screen in Windows XP home edition)… it started taking about 3 to 5 minutes to shutdown.
Well, after a lot of tests with some of the programs that were installed in my computer, I found that when I kill the ashserv.exe process, the system get back to normal shutdown delay.
Is there anything I’m missing? Is there anything I can do to solve this problem?
I have experienced no problems with this build. However, I have experienced the same problem with ZA pro so what I do is shut down ZA before I shutdown windows. Do you use ZA? Also if it initialy worked with no problem I would assume that some other element is causing your slowdown, or am I misreading your post ?
Before I try kill any avast process, I’ve tried kill zonealarm, and it didn’t sove the slow shutdown problem. Thank you anyway. I’m listening for more sugestions…
No troubles at shutdown here… I’m using ZA either… Which version are you using? I think there was an update recently…
Did you try to uninstall (and not only disable) ZA?
I’ve just update my Zone Alarm, but it seems it had no effect at all. The shutting down problem persists… I also tried shutting down msn, as I had configured it to use Avast to check for incoming files viruses (Tools->Options->File Transfers).
Acctually, the only thing I do that seems to work fine is kill the ashserv.exe process.
If just before shuting down you left click the ‘a’ blue icon and let the Standard Shield properties being shown, can you see the ‘last’ scanned file there?
Igor, when I begin shutting down, yes, it spins. But I can’t see it during all the shutdown process… after a while, windows does a logoff and starts the shutting down routine… it passes to the “saving user’s preferences” (or something like that) screen and then it stays a lot of time in the next message screen (“windows is shutting down”)… during this message, at first, some disk access is performed, but only in the very begining. After this very begining period, comes a looooong period where no disk access is performed and the shutting down process seems it won’t finish anymore. After a few minutes (about 4 or 5 minutes) the shuttdown process finish successfully.
Jpavel, can you go Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Events
And check in each category if there is an ERROR while saving the user registry while shutting down or something similar?
Ist there any other error that could be interesting to know and troubleshoot?
There was no Errors, but there was a warning at the Application branch that may be related to the problem. It it’s in Portuguese because is my default langage, but I’m gonna translate it:
"Windos has saved JOEY\Juliano Pável’s User Registry Entry while an aplication or service still was using the Registry during logoff. The memory used by the user’s Registry hasn’t been released. The Registry will be flushed when it’s not in use anymore.
Often this is caused by services that are being executed as an user account. Try setting them to run in the LocalService or NetworkService account."
(Same warning in Portuguese: "O Windows salvou o Registro JOEY\Juliano Pável do usuário enquanto um aplicativo ou serviço ainda estava usando o Registro durante o logoff. A memória usada pelo Registro do usuário não foi liberada. O Registro será descarregado quando não estiver mais em uso.
Em geral, isso é causado por serviços que estão sendo executados como uma conta de usuário. Tente configurá-los para que sejam executados na conta LocalService ou NetworkService.")
Do you have the avast and VRDB system tray icons merged? If so, this causes a long delay in the shutdown process most of the time. This has been mentioned before but apparently avast cannot find a fix for it.
Thank you, MrRAlan! It seems the problem is solved. I’ve split up the icons into VRDB and avast again and the shutdown becomes normal in the first test I’ve just made. If something strange happen again, I’ll report it here.
MrRAlan, that sort of surprises me. Your saying this is a KNOWN problem and a KNOWN workaround (to split the icons)? I hear something like that for the first time…
I just say that because I read previous posts here about this problem. This is where I first learned of it. Splitting the icons works for me also but I don’t want two icons. The question is, will avast look into this to see if they make it shutdown properly when the two icons are merged??? Thanks Vlk.
Alan, for sure this is not truth… at least, merged icons NEVER slowdown my system, my shutdown, etc.
I can’t even see any relationship between the two facts… Maybe you can post more info to discuss this. Thanks.
I cannot explain it but it solved the problem with several users. It works for me and it worked for the original poster of this thread! I didn’t make it up, I read it here before from another user. I don’t know where the posts are but search and you will find them. When avast merges the icons, there must be something else happening in the code that is causing it.
Vlk, MrALan is right… I looked for it yesterday in the forum and found it. But, unfortunately, the problem didn’t go away a hundred percent as I first thought and post a few days ago. Now it comes back intermitently. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. It happens more than it doesn’t.
By the way, I’m gonna change the ok icon on the thread of this message. And I’m considering uninstalling avast, because what is happing with my system is very annoying
After reading this thread a couple of days ago, I decided to test this. I split the tray icons, did a shutdown, restarted, merged the icons again, shutdown, and finally restarted again. I did this several times over 48 hours under various curcumstances … programs/IE windows left running, programs/IE windows closed first, etc. These were complete shutdowns and not a restart from the shutdown menu. Honestly, I could not tell any difference in shutdown times.
Perhaps this happens on some systems depending on the hardware/system settings/software involved. ???
