Avast driver conflicts

General Topics
1

Just jumped onto this user forum to ask a simple question: Has anyone had any problems with driver conflicts after installing the avast anti-vurus software? I just installed the free edition on two computers yesterday, both Athlon XPs and both running XP Home OSs … and both have begun to act up in similar fashion … connections to servers failing, mail not able to be sent. This computer just crashed with a blue screen announcement that it was shutting down to prevent damage!

The microsoft error report came back saying that the computer had just recovered from a serious error caused by a device driver and though they couldn’t pin-point it, they offered that any new anti-virus software might have installed its own drivers and caused the problem.

Hardly a co-incidence, it seems. No new devices added here for a long time.

Any thoughts or defensive denials from the avast community?

Terry

2

What was the exact error on the BSOD?
Do you have another av on those systems as well?

  • If so which one?
  • If not, was there one on previously? (which one)
    Any error(s) in Avast’s log files?
connections to servers failing
Did you allow ashwebsv in your firewall?
connections to servers failing, mail not able to be sent
What happen if you tried? Any error? If so which one?

Are these preinstalled OS’s?
Any other (resident?) security related software installed?

3

You also need to allow ashMaiSv.exe access to the internet in your firewall, no permission, no email.

4

Wow - real people! … Thanks for the replies guys; I’m not sure if the error report saved though. I looked at the details but it was not meaningful to me … two lines of addresses but nothing in plain English for the illiterati.

As for symptoms on mailing … the connection is made (I’m on a painfully slow dial-up out in the sticks, btw) and mail will come in but on sending, the dialogue box indicates the message is going out - but it doesn’t. The progress indicator zips across even on large picture files (way too fast for this connection) and then the system sits there until a time-out or failure notice pops up. No error message, per se.

I changed to Eudora (downladed it over about 45 minutes without any connection problems) in case something in Outlook was incompatible or it had picked up a bug but same thing. No go.

My previous virus programmes were out of date so they were uninstalled - but on this machine, only after Avast reminded me of the incompatibilities (Norton System Works). On the other machine it was PC-Cillin which was removed prior to installing Avast.

I haven’t checked (or even found - just got in from work) any Avast logs yet. I think maybe I’ve jumped the gun here and posted a bit ahead of my experience level with this software. I have some investigation to do - and thanks for the clues.

Terry in Alberta

5

If a bluescreen appeared, the corresponding minidump should be stored in Windows\Minidump folder. Are there any (recent) files there?
Or, if you have the “full dump” set, the whole memory was dumped to Windows\memory.dmp (that would take a while to finish).

6

tdamm

The progress indicator zips across even on large picture files (way too fast for this connection) and then the system sits there until a time-out or failure notice pops up.
Welcome to the forum. The indicator zipping along is probably the ashMail scanner scanning the file. The slow crawl portion is your dial up connections fault. To avoid the timeout, try increasing the server timeouts in your e-mail settings.