I’ve been using Avast Free for many years and love the program. Recently, I upgraded to version 6.0.1000. I’ve been having some problems with both the system scan (quick) and the boot scan. It seems like the scanner will hang while scanning the simplest of files. (Word Documents, PDF’s, etc.) It doesn’t always happen on the same file or even the same folder. The same thing happens when I schedule a boot scan. It will get hung up on some file and just sit there forever. After a half hour or so I need to abort the scan. Today, I aborted a Quick Scan and afterward I noticed that the AvastSvc.exe process was still running wild using 99% of the CPU. I had to reboot the computer to get that
to stop. My PC is pretty clean and I have not had any malware problems. I also never had any issues with previous versions. I noticed that the post for the new beta release mentioned something about a fix for an incompatibility with ZoneAlarm in WinXP. I do run ZoneAlarm so could that be the issue?
Running WinXP Home SP3, Athlon XP 2000, 1GB Ram, Avast 6.0.1000, ZoneAlarm Free. I also have MalwareBytes and Spybot S&D installed but these are not running when the problem occurs.
With ZA and XP, you should use the 1035 prerelease.
P.S. Get rid of Spybot, esp. TeaTimer. :-X
Yes, I have the tea timer in spybot disabled. I know that component causes a lot of problems. It is still an effective scanner though. I’ll try the 1035 and see what happens.
You probably won’t like this, but I would drop SB and ZA…!!
… and bury it under 16-ton weight 
8)
;D
Could you elaborate on why you would suggest that? I work on a lot of people’s PC’s and I can’t tell you how many I have cleaned up with SB. Just recently, I worked on one that SB was the only thing that cleaned a piece of malware off of it. Avast couldn’t find it and neither could Malwarebytes. SB nailed it. I know that SB is very dated but I think it is still an effective scanner. I agree that the teatimer is nothing but a problem. As for ZA, it is still a far superior firewall than the lame one that comes with WinXP. The one that comes with Win7 I know is much better but for people still running XP I still think ZA is a better choice.
I have SpyBot working very well on my XP Laptop. It really does help clean up the malware. The imaging can be used by Windows XP as a restore point. On my Vista 32Bit Vista laptop, I’m having problems I suspect are Avast associated. I use Cisco’s Network Magic, SpyBot and Avast on 3 home computers 2 Vista 1 XP. The Vista 32Bit Laptop is the only one I’m experiencing freezing. I was working very well a month ago now It’s so unstable I can barely use it. I’ve run SpyBot the Windows scan disk maintenance with repair and Avast boot scan. Nothing helps.b It take a long long time to shutdown and startup is inconsistent sometimes it’s fairly fast and then there’s the reboot after a freeze that can take 20 minutes. When I schedule an Avast Boot Scan it freezes and will not shut down. When I force a shutdown, It does the boot scan. I rebooted and it’s at 65% as I write this. :-\
UPDATE - OK, I’ve updated to 1035 and the same thing is happening. Whenever I run
a quick scan it will hang up on some simple little file. The last time it got stuck on a simple 23kb Word document that was nothing more than a simple letter. I even tried running a scan in Windows Safe Mode to rule out any other processes interfering with Avast. Same thing, it gets stuck after a few minutes. It always seems to be one of three file types, .doc, .pdf, or .htm. I’ve let it sit there for 15 or 20 minutes and it never moves after getting stuck. When I eventually hit the stop button to end the scan, the AvastSvc.exe is using 99% of my CPU and I have to restart the computer. Otherwise the computer is running flawlessly. Any other program I try to run works fine. I’ve run scans with my other malware scanners and they all scan fine and come up clean. Avast itself seems to be running fine as long as I don’t try and scan. Not sure where to go from here. Any recommendations would be welcome.
Stupid me. I fixed the problem. I thought I had the latest version of Avast but I was using V 5? When I updated to the latest V6 my Network Magic, Avast and SpyBot are working OK for now. I find these programs essential tool and now I’m ;D
Not sure what else to try. I saw the most recent update to 1044 so I installed that. I uninstalled SB to rule anything out there. I shut down ZA before scanning too. The scanner still hangs. The elapsed time keeps running but nothing else changes and there is no HDD activity. Same as before, when I stop the scan the AvastSvc.exe peocess is running out of control and I need to reboot. Is there a place to download the install file for the free version of Avast 5? I never had any issues with 5 so maybe I should go back to that. If not, I might need to consider MSE or AVG 
I don’t want to do that because I’ve always been real happy with Avast. I just can’t have an AV program that won’t scan. I’d have no way to remove a virus if I ever got one.
Uninstall it.
I’ll give it a try tonight. I’m willing to try anything at this point. However, my scans in Safe Mode and the boot time scans are also hanging. Zone Alarm wouldn’t even be loaded in those two environments so I’m not sure if it will make a difference. I’ll post back the results later.
OK, I have uninstalled ZA and there is no difference. The quick scan stops after
about 3% just like before. So now, SB and ZA are both gone from my system and there is no change. Not sure where to go from here. I’ve seen anoter post in the forum from soemoene having the same issue.
OK, now I’m really starting to think something is up with version 6. I fired up my
old laptop which I was thinking also has 6.0.1000 installed on it. As soon as I
start a quick scan the system freezes and I get a BSOD. My wife’s PC still has 5.1.889 on it as I haven’t allowed that one to update to 6.0.1000 and that one scans just fine with no errors. Of my 3 computers with Avast, the two with 6 on it are having problems, the one with 5 on it works fine.
Please, go to folder \windows\minidump and send the newest (recent) .mdmp files for analysis.
There is also C:\Windows\Memory.dmp file.
Better if you can compress (zip), rename it with an unique name, them and add some information about the BSOD and the link for this thread.
Upload it to this anonymous ftp server: ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming/