avast! Free ver. 6 + COMODO Firewall + XP SP3 = Lag and Lockup at Startup...

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

… which is odd because both avast! and COMODO have run on this system in the past in perfect harmony. But recently, during startup, there have been times when the system really lags, none of the system tray icons except for the network icon and the avast! icon will load, and various programs will not load after I click on their desktop icons. To complicate things further, if I open the taskmanager and attempt to kill a task, the taskmanager locks up as well.

At first I thought this was either malware, or a corrupt system file issue, but after ruling out the malware through scans and a thorough combing through of the registry, and performing the system file protection scanner to fix any system file issues, the problem still persisted.

I decided to experiment and performed a complete uninstall of avast! 6 in safe mode, and when I restarted my computer, everything loaded perfectly. There was no lag, all the systray icons were there, and I could open my programs with ease. So I thought maybe my avast! was just updated incorrectly and decided to do a full re-installation from scratch. I install avast! again, restart the computer, and my startup is locking up on me and lagging again. My programs are once again not loading.

So I did another test, and this time, I removed COMODO but kept avast!. Now, it’s running better. Not perfectly (firefox doesn’t want to load for some reason), but everything else works with just avast! installed.

The problem is now I don’t have a firewall and I need to figure out why firefox won’t load (which may be completely unrelated to all this, for all I know.) I would rather use COMODO over Windows Firewall, but it doesn’t seem to want to work with avast! any more.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Edit: Also, happy New Year! :smiley:

2

G’day and welcome to Avast forum,

IF you’re still having problem running Comodo Firewall along side with you’re Avast free version, please discuss Comodo FW related issue at the Comodo forum website https://forums.comodo.com/index.php

3

I currently have COMODO Firewall uninstalled, and I have avast! installed. I’m restarting the computer right now (typing from my laptop).

Ok, I did notice a few things. Upon shutdown, there were quite a few hanging processes that took a while to end. There are still some system tray icons that should have loaded by now upon startup, but only the avast! and the network icons are up.

However, I am able to get Internet Explorer to open, which I wasn’t able to do when I had both COMODO Firewall and avast! installed. And I can kill tasks in taskmanager without it locking up on me now. Firefox is still not loading, and I don’t know if it has anything to do with any of this.

Before, when I had both installed, I could hardly get any program to open (including COMODO). But now, even with just avast! installed, some of the tray icons are still not showing up. What I’ll do is, I’ll go into safe mode and remove avast! again, then restart it and see if the tray icons are loading properly, and to check and see if Firefox will work, so I can rule that out.

4

Ok, so I uninstalled avast! and restarted. The first thing I noticed was that all the tray icons are loading perfectly now.

Firefox is still not loading, so we can probably rule that out as a separate issue.

OK - So my computer just restarted on me, randomly. o_o

… I’ll be keeping that in mind. That is odd…

Now I’m going to restart it. I’m noticing a lot of tasks are still hanging. “End Program - 7fc This program is not responding.”, for example.

So I’ve come to this is what I know so far. Right now;

PC without AV and Firewall - Strange random restarts, hanging tasks at logout, firefox won’t open.

PC with just COMODO - Same as above.

PC with just avast! - Same as above; add problems with loading tray icons.

PC with avast! and COMODO - All of the above + desktop and taskbar lags, hangs, and the task manager will freeze if I try to kill any processes. Note that this does not happen every startup, but it happens a LOT of the time. The majority of the time.

So I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ve checked for malware, defragmented, checked the system files, recently got the computer cleaned out (dust) and a new fan put in, did a thorough chkdsk scan, and other things I can’t remember at the moment. lol

I’ll go ahead and post this information at the COMODO website also, but there’s more to it than just COMODO, and now, it seems there’s more to it than avast! as well.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on?

5

Have you tested the RAM? (memtest and memtest86+, for example and among others).

Cleaning dust may have actually “inserted” it deeper in the RAM slots.

I would also recommend reviewing advanced firewall settings and rules (whether comodo’s and/or Windows firewall). It doesn’t matter if the firewall is disabled or enabled, you should anyway delete the firewall rules related to browsers and avast.

After uninstalling avast and comodo, run the respective removal utilities so to clean any potential remnants that may still conflict in your system. A partial list of removal utilities is located at http://singularlabs.com/uninstallers/security-software/.

For the removal of avast (also located in that list), you should select the correct folder and run the utility several times, selecting each time a different version of avast (5 and 6 for example). Reboot between each run of each removal utility (for each version of comodo, for each version of avast you ever had and so on).

Read the specific relevant info for each removal utility before running it.

After running the removal utilities and rebooting, I would also recommend manually cleaning any potential remnant (hidden) folders, like any “avast*” or “alwil*” for example.

If in such cleaned situation, IE, FF, connections and tray icons are working as expected, then start again with a clean install of avast, using the official site to download the latest stable version of avast. If you can, use “right click → run as administrator” to install, and reboot after installing. Only after the reboot start configuring or whatever test you want / need.

For comodo, if you want to re-install, remember to install the firewall but not the antivirus. Reboot after that.

Finally, the firewall rules would be re-created (remember you deleted them before), using “learning mode” or equivalent.

You may add mutual exclusions between avast and comodo.

At each step, test if the system keeps behaving as it should, so you would identify which exact step is causing the problem, if it returns back.

Please report back.

6

This issue is referred to frequently in the Comodo forum. Here is one thread with suggestions: https://forums.comodo.com/empty-t73832.0.html;msg526232. I would start by setting the exclusion settings in Avast for Comodo given in the above thread.

I have used Comodo w/Avast 6 on a Win 7 installation without issue or exceptions. However, I installed Comodo before I installed Avast.

Another possible area of conflict could be Avast behavior shield and Comodo’s Defense+. Again, setting the proper exclusions should prevent this. You can also temporarily disable Avast’s behavior shield when running Defense+ and see if that improves your performance.

Finally, Comodo is not the “lightest” software in existance. If you are running XP on old hardware with a slow hard drive, old single core processor, and minimal ram, Comodo might not the right firewall for you.

7

I’m running CIS’ Firewall and D+ but not AV and then Avast as AV. I’ve had trouble with the problems mentioned and found some things that might be of help:

turning off Comodo’s Sandbox - this on its own, without Avast running, caused lock-ups of up to 5 min! Probably not a good idea to have 2 sandboxen running at the same time.

ensuring that Avast’s Services started at boot, i.e. not delayed as in Settings - Troubleshooting. Although the PC takes a bit longer to boot, having the delay caused further delays and lockups after boot (I’d tried the delay to speed booting - more haste, less speed!).

I’ll give a go to excluding some of Comodo in Avast, see if it helps on boot or running. Which are the key exclusions, please?

8

I’m currently running a memtest86 scan and I’ll let you know the results as soon as I get them.

The exclusions would be handy to know, for when I install them again.

@ DonZ63; I’m running XP on 2 gigs of RAM, an 80 GB HD (I don’t know the speed of the drive, but I do know that before I had the fan replaced and the dust cleaned out, the HD was maxing out at temps up to 130 degrees F! Yikes! Since the new fan and dust cleaning, the temp maxes out at about 96 degrees F. Needless to say, the computers performance has improved dramatically since then. But these issues mentioned here are still with me. I’m assuming the issues I’ve posted on have nothing to do with the HD getting so hot before dusting the computer and getting a new fan.) My processor is an Intel Pentium 4 2.40 GHZ. Single Core.

Should I mention that I removed both COMODO and avast! using Revo Uninstaller? It’s a handy uninstaller tool that finds any registry entries and leftover files related to the program that is being uninstalled, and I figured that it was thorough enough. Or should I definitively use the avast! and COMODO removal tools respectively from now on?

9

It’s always “best” to use the developers Uninstall Tool :wink:

http://singularlabs.com/uninstallers/security-software/

10

No errors found in the memory test.

11
turning off Comodo's Sandbox - this on its own, without Avast running, caused lock-ups of up to 5 min! Probably not a good idea to have 2 sandboxen running at the same time.
You should be using only one sandbox; either Comodo's or Avast's. I prefered Comodo's since it had more features such as auto cloud scanning.

OP never did state if he was running Defense+. Sandboxing in Comodo is part of Defense+. If he installed Comodo in the default configuration, then a basic ver. of Defense+ would have been installed including the sandbox.

Also I do hope you have at least the Windows firewall active if you are using the Internet. You should also have an AV installed.

Also since you have both Comodo and Avast uninstalled, I would install Comodo first, reboot, and then install Avast and reboot a second time.

12

I did use Defense+, yes.

And I’m using my laptop for the internet, temporarily. I have the connection disabled on my XP desktop.