I just had Avast Free 5.1.865 freeze during install quick scan on two computers.
On both computers running win7 64bit, I uninstalled AVG 9 rebooted and installed Avast Free 5.1.865
During installation Avast started a quick scan, that was taking 15 minutes(not quick), so I clicked the start button and the machine instantly locked up solid. Had to hold power button to force a restart. After restarting, Avast came up normally.
Both are win7 64bit with MBAM Pro. On is a Acer laptop and the other HP desktop.
sir mikerepairs, you’re not the only one with these freeze problems on installing Avast on many machines (17 PC freeze-ups on a fresh OS install) had to hard reboot them all. as soon as avast finishes installing, IT APPEARS TO BE TRYING TO UPDATE RIGHT AS IT IS INITIALIZING A QUICK SCAN. i’m absolutely positive that if the Avast coders remove this ridiculous quickscan from the program there will be no more freeze-ups. when i install Avast on any machine, I DO NOT WANT AVAST TO IMMEDIATELY SCAN IT! for virus removal there are protocols to follow.
however i seem to have stumbled onto a quick solution to stop the freeze-up from happening so you can successfully click “cancel” on the so called “quick scan” and that is to unplug the cat-5 cable from the machine before installing avast (leave it unplugged through the entire process). near the “finishing” part it will give you an error that it cannot contact the servers, but after about 30 seconds it will finish and go into the ridiculous quick scan. this morning this quick fix worked after Avast’s quickscan crap locked up a machine right in front of the customer.
Avast personnel- please take this quick scan lockup seriously- if you don’t you will lose a lot of business. pc owners don’t want to waste their time trying to figure out what caused their machine to lock up, so they will uninstall Avast and switch to wet toilet paper type antivirus programs like AVG or Symantec or Norton resource hog. i love and respect Avast as one of the most powerful antivirus programs, but if this freezing continues after your next program update, i wont use Avast!
also my apologies if i offended anyone in any way- i’m sure you would feel my pain after 17 computers locking up upon avast install on 32 bit windows operating systems. (user account control is always turned off and the pc is restarted before i install anything) i build custom rigs from scratch based on the owners preferences ie a graphics designer will get such and such in their rig a gamer will get such and such in their rig and so on. so please cleanup this problem as it is not a small one.
.> wow i posted a little too late? Avast 6 just came in… i love the website blocker as it is very needed for people who wont stop going to Pogo and Popcap while at work. the auto sandbox feature will be iffy on some items that are super locked- i hope there is some timeout for auto sandbox attempts? if the auto sandbox attempt is successful… why not throw in an analyzer that will upload suspicious activity attempts on the caught item to your databases? of course with an allow or cancel feature in case the users do or don’t want to submit the data? We shall see how the install goes… ill post bugs and pluses
when i install Avast and Malwarebytes is after all updates have been performed (on a fresh install) Java has been installed to 6-24, Flash installed and Adobe Reader 10.1 installed.
on an infected machine though. i look at the symptoms in normal boot and attempt to hit the registry so/mi/wi/cu/ru on both local and user. i remove all updater registries and driver start ups since they run when you need them. pretty much all that is left is the current antivirus(i remove it if it isn’t Avast - and i remove that too if Avast has been hacked) and anti malware programs, as well as proprietary software the company uses - which is rare. i then go into safe mode and install and register Malwarebytes and perform a flash scan and then a full scan (still in safe mode). i then restart and boot up normally and install avast- update it- then i set all settings on high and schedule a boot scan. when the boot scan is finished i reset the firewall settings and reset the internet security settings(also check to make sure a proxy hasn’t been enforced) and i then download and run Combofix. after Combofix is done i download and run Hijackthis. i compare the logs to analyzed results and then i’m pretty much positive the PC can be returned to the owner. huff o i almost forgot i check to make sure the infectee’s java, flash and reader are the current version and perform their update too.
in either case though, infected or not i had 5.1.888 issues with the auto scan upon install. i don’t have any machines to install avast 6 on right now so i hope all is well… :s
i build custom rigs from scratch based on the owners preferences ie a graphics designer will get such and such in their rig a gamer will get such and such in their rig and so on. so please cleanup this problem as it is not a small one.
We shall see how the install goes… ill post bugs and pluses