Avast causing Steam games to have unkillable processes

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

For the past month, maybe a little longer, I’ve been getting unkillable processes from some of my steam games. First it was Unclaimed World. Then it was Signs of Life. Now it appears to be happening to Planet Centauri.

I thought it was Unclaimed Worlds fault back in the beginning. Here’s a link to when I was having the problem and their devs were baffled and trying to help me fix it.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/284100/discussions/2/490125737482675501/

At the end my game started working, several weeks later. I thought they had done something that fixed it. But then Signs of life began having the exact same trouble. 3 unkillable processes. Here’s a link to my communication from them.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/263200/discussions/2/458604254424773539/

I thought for sure it had to be the devs of the games I was having troubles with. But the signs of life dev told me he had had avast cause a problem with him starting a game once and asked me to try disabling it. Normally i don’t disable my protection for anyone. And even then I decided to wait a while and play something else and maybe it’d fix itself. Then earlier tonight I tried to play ‘Planet Centauri’ and guess what? it wouldn’t start. when I opened task manager there it was. 3 planetcentauri processes. All 3 unkillable. Crap. So since this was happening on several games I was determined to get to the bottom of the issue. So I restarted my computer and when it got done booting i disabled avast’s ‘shields’ and launched the game again. It ran flawlessly. Then I closed the game and re-enabled my shields and tried to run the game again. Wouldn’t work and it gave me 3 unkillable processes again. So I was forced to restart my computer. I just tried disabling avast and ran signs of life. It ran without a problem. Then I shut it down and tried again with planet centauri. It also ran fine with avast disabled. So somehow avast is stopping some games in steam from running and making some kind of hiccup that’s causes steam to launch 3 processes. 3 unkillable processes.

I live alone and I’m the only one who uses my computer. I’m no computer novice. My computer is infection free. No spyware or malware. I do periodic checks and it’s clean. Just thought I’d mention that so we can avoid someone telling me it’s probably spyware or malware.

Does anyone know of anything in avast, a setting or something, that might cause this to occur? I use avast free antivirus. My computer specs are below

Operating System
MS Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Thuban 45nm Technology
RAM
8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-880GA-UD3H (Socket M2)
Graphics
HD2201 (1680x1050@59Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

2
  • Which Avast…? (Free/Pro/IS/Premier)
  • Which version…?
  • Other security related software installed…?
  • Which AV(s) did you use before Avast…?
3

As stated above, I use Avast free antivirus. It’s the latest version… uh just a sec I’ll get the version # 10.4.2233 but as I mentioned. It’s been doing this for over a month. Also I use zonealarm for a firewall. The rest are on demand scanners like mbam, superantispyware and spybot s&d.

4

First, be sure to get rid of Spybot…!!

Then:

  1. Download Avast Free Antivirus: https://files.avast.com/iavs9x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe
  2. Follow instructions: https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility (Run this tool for all prior installed Avast versions…!!)
  3. Reinstall Avast with the downloaded installer from point 1.
  4. Reboot.
5

Hey, I’m the lead programmer on Signs of Life and I thought I’d drop in and give what details I could as well. Signs of Life (and Unclaimed Worlds, another game that the OP mentioned having a problem with) use the XNA framework, so I suspect there may be some connection there. Aside from that, the only real solid information I have is that a few months ago Avast started deleting the executable for Signs of Life when we built it in our testing environment, so I reported it as a false positive and had to whitelist the folder in order to continue development. Our game uses Steamworks.net networking, and I have no idea if that would cause some kind of behavior that Avast finds suspicious, but I figured I’d mention it as well.

6
As stated above, I use Avast free antivirus. It's the latest version... uh just a sec I'll get the version # 10.4.2233
That is not the latest version. You are several versions behind.

alexander.tilkin,
not saying it will in this case, but signing your files can make a difference.

7

Thanks Eddy, I’ll look into that.

8

Sorry for the long delay. Once I found that white listing the affected games fixed the problem(well, by passed it, anyway), I decided to wait for a response. But apparently this forums settings don’t default to sending me an email on replies to my posts. Not a big deal but as i said i forgot about this till a little bit ago. When I checked i seen all the replies.

@Eddy, Thank you. I forgot that the update tab in avast has 2 sections and when the upper section said up to date i didn’t think to check any further.

@alexander, Thanks for adding some info. I appreciate it.

@Asyn, Thanks for your help. Not sure if this will resolve the issue, but that avastclean tool helped a lot.

9

Change your settings if you want a notification to topics you participate in:

http://screencast-o-matic.com/screenshots/u/Lh/1451515168219-82648.png

10

@bob Thank you. I found you can also click the ‘Notify’ button inside a topic as well.

11

You’re welcome and correct. My post was for a global request, yours was for a specific request. :slight_smile:

12

You’re welcome.