I’ve been using Avast 5 Pro fine on my own PC, but I started rolling it out to 40 customer’s PCs and the first two have immediately been experiencing repeated system hangs. I’ve read all the posts on this forum, but the Alwil team have been very quiet. I’m sure they are busy fixing bugs, but could they post here or on the blog to just let us know they are working on a new update and what the timescale is likely to be? An announcement will go a long way to keep us all happy and if we have to wait for a few days, then we can work around this. Afterall, that it the point of all this technology (website, forum, blog etc) - easy flow of information.
I agree there needs to be a sticky post pertaining to XP boot hangs and BSOD’s at a very minimum. Looks like not installing the Behavior Shield may fix the hangs and possibly the BSOD’s. Not a fix but maybe a workaround. Several other problems should have a sticky thread of their own also. The way it is now is a freaking nightmare. Avast 5 Free seems to be working trouble free for me on my Win 7 64 bit box. No Behavior Shield for 64 bit, maybe I’m lucky. I have two XP boxes but there is no way in hell I’m installing Avast 5 until this is all figured out.
I knew it would be trouble when Avast started a poll in the beta forum to see how many people were having trouble and then came out with the final version a few days later. IMO Avast 5 should have been held in beta at least until the major problems were fixed. Its weird that it was in beta near for ever but then suddenly released even though many complained about hangs and BSOD’s.
Spot on. Software vendors should also avoid tweaks between the last release candidate and release - this has stung Alwil badly, with the released version worse than beta 5.0.363.
Microsoft made a similar faux pas with the initial release of Internet Explorer 8, and Mozilla have made a similar blunder with Firefox in the past.
So developers, don’t do it!. Submit all changes to your beta testers, and never release a product until all the reported problems with your betas are resolved.
@wonderwrench
I tried installing Avast 5 on Win.xp sp3, both with and without the behavior shield. No luck. When I tried to open up a text file within the Avast reports folder, system hung and I had to manually shutdown computer.
I’m having another problem now though. I decided I wanted to go back to Avast 4.8 Home edition. So, I downloaded, installed and registered the software. License key was accepted, yet upon reboot Avast 4.8 Home became Avast 4.8 Professional and asked for another License key, which I don’t have. I could no longer update nor run a virus scan.
I believe the culprit lies in linking the wrong registration page, which sent me the wrong License key. Avast Free License key is obviously different than Avast 4.8 Home License key.
What a pain in my rump.
If anyone could please link me to the old registration page, I’d be a happy camper. As it stands, I uninstalled Avast 4.8 Home and re-installed it, I now have 59 days left of use, afterwhich I’ll have to insert a correct License key.
I think I read a previous thread under ‘making v4.8Home available again’ and if I recall there were links provided to download v.4.8Free.
I am experiencing the same issues. Numerous system hangs at different points.
Sometimes it’s simply clicking the ‘update programme’ button - it hangs when it reaches ‘Web Shield’. Other times it’s when Firefox is also loaded.
The result is always the same - I have to manually shutdown and reboot. Otherwise there is no response - Task Manager doesn’t even work.
I though it might have been a RAM issue, or too many programs loaded at once. However, RAM usage is actually less now (only around 300k of 2,400). Moreover only PCTFW and MBAM are also active.
Thank Christ I haven’t had any BSODs yet. However, is that just around the corner?
An official response would be much appreciated!
This did not really happen but some humor. Avast released version 5 and then all employee’s when on a vacation. I still say the forum mods need to grab some of the common post problems and sticky them so people with the same problem have a chance to post in the same thread. Hell I’d do it my self If I was a mod on this forum. The way it is now you have dozens if not hundreds of posts all related to the same problem. Add 10+ major problem types and you are talking about a hell of a lot of forum activity. When a person makes a post its lost in a matter of minutes. Even if someone finds the post most have such a lack of info you can’t help them if you knew the answer. People need to list which version of Avast 5 they are using, upgrade from 4 or clean etc. The OS used and the other security apps in use. Hardware specs may even be needed, sure could not hurt. I feel really back for all the people that are not computer savvy that are experiencing major problems with 5. 
I’m having this problem also (XP Pro sp3) and thought I would troubleshoot it.
I disabled the behaviour shield but freezes continued, so have now uninstalled the behaviour shield entirely. Fingers crossed no more freezes!
maybe u are using another Antivirus running on your pc so it is caused a conflict of them…,.
Well I havn’t found any problems with 5 so far except it dosn’t like Vitakey at all… I had to uninstall it so I could login to windows normally outside of safe mode, It runs fine tho…
Hoping maybe the dev’s here could make Vitakey sorta kind work on load as it stops it from loading at bootup… could be just a problem on my end, going to give it a test, re-installing Vitakey. And hopefully going to give it another go =)
And for you of those who are wondering Vitakey = Fingerprint reader.