On Dec. 1, there was an notification that a program update was available for my AV Server module. The BPP tried to download the update and install, and it failed. The next day it tried to do its daily AV Signature update and that failed. Each day, it would try to update and fail. Then i got errors in the logs that my signatures were out of date. Soon, i got errors on the MS Win Server console, that Windows has shut down the program Avast, because of Windows Data Execution Error prevention. (DEP). then every day, the same thing would happen with a concole error and Avast being shut down because of DEP. Finally, after 2 weeks of this, on Dec 15, my server hung, and crashed. I have a lights-out operation. Noone monitors the server. it takes care of itself. Usually an email is sent upon fatal errors. Nothing. A reboot of server did not fix problem. Had to manually go into Task Manager, kill processes, take over console, log in as admin, kill all avast processes, manually restart avast and force the update to the program, then force a signature update. - rebooting in between most of these processes, until i got system cleaned out and running again. Just to let you know: Avast BPP is not self-maintaining or self-healing. Rather, some of these updates fail, and kill the server in the process. Happy to provide logs for analysis. Please be specific in your request.
yesterday, Dec 21, again, the server becomes non-responsive. (clients cannot log in.). I check the SBS2003 Server console, and it has a series of “DEP” errors generated by Windows, for Avast. I have to log in, click thru the screens to acknowledge all the errors, kill the avast processes, restart the server, Force a manual update of Avast Program, and Signature files. restart server again, and now server and avast works ok.
DEP is the Data Execution Prevention process by Windows, whereby it stops programs from crashing the system. Avast seems to keep triggering this process on SBS 2003. Particularly when it tries to perform a program update.