Avast 4.8 on XP x64 hangs at sign-in

After seeing the New Version notification and letting it download and install the latest (4.8.1169) version of Avast on my XP Pro x64 edition of windows, I hit the reboot button and problems began. The system boots to the Welcome screen just fine, but when you go to sign on, the system hangs. The only way out is to hit the reset button. I’ve tried several different security schemes (NFORCE firewall, Windows firewall, no firewall) and even did system restore several times to get in only to have the system autoupdate and lock up again. In the end, I had to manually uninstall the program to get system operations back to normal.

So right now, my x64 Windows has no anti-virus program because Avast isn’t working.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Got a fix or a workaround?

Can you test booting in safe mode and temporarily disable the avast self defense module:

  1. Right click the ‘a’ blue icon on system tray (run ashdisp.exe).
  2. Programs settings > Troubleshooting (tab)
  3. Disable self defense module

Well, aside from the fact that there was no way to get to that little blue “a”, I tried the following stuff…

Created a System Restore point
Installed Avast 4.8.1169 (downloaded today) and rebooted
Booted to Safe Mode when the system hung up
Ran aswclean (downloaded today) and rebooted
Reran installation and rebooted
Rebooted to Safe Mode when the system hung up again
Started Avast from the Start Menu
Entered my registration key
Disabled the rootkit scan
Disabled the Self Defense module
Rebooted normally
Rebooted to Safe Mode when the system still hung up
Ran aswclean again to remove Avast, rebooted normally and signed on
Logged on to the Avast Support Forums and wrote this message

Any other suggestions?

I have the same problem with XP 32-bit. Like you, the only solution I’ve found so far is uninstalling :frowning:

The strange thing is your comments about booting into safe mode and it hung. avast isn’t loaded in safe mode (hence your need to start it) so I’m not sure what the problem is.

I don’t think that’s what Paul said. He stated he booted (or rebooted) into ‘safe mode’ when his system hung after re-installation of avast 4.8. At least that’s the way I read his post. Sounds like he tried installing avast 4.8 three times… completely uninstalling (along with running aswclean) in between with no success.

Quite possibly, I was reading it differently booted into safe mode, when the system hung. Note my use of the comma, I inadvertently saw this as requiring one, which would make it read differently, the when becoming more like and.

I had a trojan in my windows/system32 folder (kdbg32.dll) I don’t know if it was the trojan itself that was causing the problem, or the antivirus discovering it but not prompting me what to do about it (because it was still in the middle of the Login process which can’t be interrupted?) that was causing the problem. I did a boot-time scan and moved it to the chest and it seems to work fine so far. By the way, do you have any advice about what to do about infected system files?
Thanks

If you are looking in the System Files section of the chest ?
If so they are back-up copies of important system files, so leave them as they are.

As for items in the Infected Files section, there is no rush to delete anything from the chest, a protected area where it can do no harm. Anything that you send to the chest you should leave there for a few weeks. If after that time you have suffered no adverse effects from moving these to the chest, scan them again (inside the chest) and if they are still detected as viruses, delete them.

Generally, take care, do more research… if you delete or move to Chest a file that is needed to boot you won’t be able even to turn on your machine…
If it still on Chest, right click it and scan it, no rush as David said, you can delete it in two weeks preventing false positive detections.

Thanks, this is very sensible advice.

Glad we could help.

I still have this hanging problem, too.

The only way around it is to uninstall Avast. ???

Haven’t we wandered a wee bit off topic. Is there a solution?