Avast 6 Boot Time Scan Stops At 5% and Stops Scan on .DOC, .XML and .PDF Files

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Working for a family that has a Dell Dimension E520 running 32Bit Vista, 1 GB Ram, 1.78 or so Processor. (Trying to convince owners to upgrade to Windows 7)

Had been running Avast 5.x and upgraded to 6. Problems began.

The PC will not complete a Boot Time Scan, but hang on 5% and on different .DOC, .XML or .XLS or .PDF files. Normally not the same file, but normally from the same “Desktop” folder from a “User” directory.

Also run:
MalWare Bytes with no problems or hangs.
Windows Defender with no problems or hangs.
AdAware with no problems or hangs.

I uninstalled Avast 6.
Used their cleaner to “completely” remove any remnants.
Reinstalled Avast 6.
Avast 6 indicates it has downloaded the current definition files.
A Boot Time Scan will still freeze (or just not show any activity)around 5%.
After waiting for 20 to 30 minutes or more, still no activity or change.
Will press escape to stop the Boot Time Scan and the PC will then continue to boot normally.

While in Windows, we’ll open Windows Explorer, right click on just different folders and select “Scan with Avast”.

Some folders will scan and give no indication of any problems and the scan appears to have completed in an appropriate amount of time.

When we select the “Desktop” folder of user “Julie”, she has numerous other folders and files within those folders that consists of “.DOC’s”, “.XLS’s” and “.PDF’s”. Some folders and files scan fine, while others will not (at least Avast will open, but give no indication that a scan is about to start)

We can open the “problem folders” and select the files individually and they will scan fine.

One file in particular is a document (.DOC) with some clipart inserted and text boxes with “html” links inserted within them. It will scan fine on it’s own, but if the folder that file is located in is scanned then it “might” be that file that the scan stops on or it might not be the file the folder scan stops on.

There’s no duplication or replay that turns out the same when a folder scan is performed. The scan might stop on a .PDF or .DOC or .XLS.

We’ve deleted some of the files, but this has changed nothing. The folder scan will still just randomly stop on a file.

AGAIN, all was well until the upgrade to Avast 6. The upgrade did not appear to go well for them (I did not do the initial upgrade from 5.x to 6).

The Avast Cleaning Tool said it completed successfully at removing Avast “whatever”.

Have used Avast for several years with never a problem like this.

As a side note… I try to go to Microsoft’s website to run their validation tool. The PC owner said they get this window now and then that indicates they are not using a valid copy of the Windows OS. However, the install of their Vista came from the CD that came with the Dell PC. I can’t get the validation program to run from the Microsoft Website. When I click on their “Validate Button” from:

http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate/validatenow.aspx

The program will not run, download or anything, but just skip to another Microsoft page.

Thanks from the Twilight Zone for any help.
Russ

2

I have the same issue with extremely slow boot scans. Same symptoms but I let it run and run and it finally did complete about 20 hours later. (54Gb data on my hard disk) Mine appeared to hang (or run very very slow) on PDF files taking 15 minutes or more per moderate sized PDFs.

This was NOT the case in the prior version so I wonder what changed in V6 ?

3

Isn’t there any other security software (or rather an incorrectly uninstalled antivirus) on that machine? If there were some conflicts (likely on files like DOC or PDF), it might explain the locking…

As for the boot-time scan… the thing is that the boot-time scan in avast! 5 and 6 is the same executable; it’s part of the virus database, not the program, and it’s identical - so it’s kinda hard to imagine that there could be any difference between avast! 5 and 6.
The same actually goes for the scanning engine in Windows, but OK, let’s say there’s the program controlling it, which could be somehow different.

Stang: what is your machine configuration (OS, RAM size)? Can you share with us a few of the PDFs?

4

My description of the computer that you gave there could be several things to do before scanning that might help the scan proceed faster.

  1. Make sure that under “Scan Settings”-------Performance---- that the two boxes which enable cache are not checked.
  2. Defrag the HDD that you are scanning along with the “C” drive
  3. Make sure no other programs are open other than what is absolutely necessary to get to the Desktop
  4. If you are not use Free Version of Avast and not AIS which although being a superior program does more and probably requires more memory to perform as it is designed to.

Running Vista on 1GB is problematic at best and subject to extreme slow downs in programs running that have been designed over the last couple of years. You are not going to find too many companies writing Windows applications that are designed to run on on computers with only 1GB of memory.

5
  1. Only the “Store data in persistent cache” was checked on FULL SCAN, I unchecked it.(on Boot scan these options dont exist)
  2. Was just defragged with Puran a couple of days ago.
  3. Hard to have other programs open on a boot scan - no issue here
  4. Using free Avast v6.0.1000

I am running XP SP3 with 2Gb memory. Fully up to date (and hardware config didnt change when I upgraded to V6)

The only other AV program is MBAM

The only thing that changed from when it ran fine was the upgrade to V6. Now that I unchecked the one box on full scan (NOT the setting that gets used on boot scans) I will try a boot scan again tonight but… I will be very surprised if that one change makes PDF scans run faster.

I will run again tonight and at that time I will make sure I grab the exact PDFs that are slow, but from my memory it was any one that I saw it scanning.

I am not alone on this issue btw… see http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=74915.0

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: just tried to add the PDFs and they are too big (2 - 6 meg each) once again, this wasnt an issue a few weeks ago on the prior version

6

You can upload a few of the files (preferably packed into an archive, so that it’s clear they belong together) to ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming
Btw, what kind of hard disk do you have? Is your machine a desktop or notebook?

7

Dell Laptop

Toshiba HD MK6026GAX 60Gb 5400 RPM spindle speed 16 MB buffer 12 ms average seek time 5.55 ms average latency

(and there have been no hadrware changes… once again… this was not an issue PRIOR TO Avast V6)

8

I zipped 3 PDFs and FTPd them to the Avast Incoming folder…approx 27 Mb total for the 3 PDFs

9

It looks like virus file definition 110401-2 resolved my issue. Thanks !