my relatively new notebook (Asus G750JH-T4080H) with windows 8.1 64bit will not shut down while the current version (or any of the previous 2014 versions) of avast are running. when i initiate a shutdown windows prompts the usual message “shutting down…” with the dot circle spinning… for hours - but nothing happens
when i disable avast in the startup tab of the taskmanager and in the services tab of msconfig (so avast is not running when i boot my notebook the next time) then windows is able to shut down normally. windows always needs a forced, hard shutdown when avast is running and never when its disabled (i have tried this several times and its always the same). i already tried all the usual “fixes” for freezing/crashing shutdowns/reboots with windows 8 like disabling hibernation and so on but nothing seems to help except disabling avast.
any suggestions would be very welcome
thanks
edit:
just wanted to mention that i did a lot of testing today and this shutdown problem is not necessarily linked to avast. while disabling avast did seem to reduce the number of shutdown crashes, it did not completely get rid of them. i am still facing shutdown issues - i’ll post here again as soon as i know more…
this was a really, really, really long week in terms of system fixing
first i have to say that i think my shutdown problem had nothing to do with avast - but rather was a combination for two things:
1st thing: windows 8.1 seems to have problems shutting down if you disable UAC completely (via registry - turning down the uac slider does not completely disable uac). so i had to enable uac again in the registry which is now running on the lowest setting and now always bugs with admin premission requests. with this fixed my system was able to get past the spinning circle with “shutting down” messege from windows. but:
2nd thing: my system is a notebook and somehow did never cut the power after shutting down (the screen went black, fans got quite and stuff, but the info (power, wlan, hdd) and keyboard leds continued to glow. i did two steps to fix this: installed most current bios driver, what did not fix the problem. after that i installed new wlan and bluetooth drives and suddenly shutting down was no problem anymore.
avast is running nicely now on my system - mostly, but still sometimes needs to be disabled (for example, i could not install the bluetooth drivers on my notebook without disabling avast first). but i am sure glad it can be used nicely now
hope this info can help some of you experiencing similar issues.