There are not too many antivirus programs if any that work perfectly in Vista. Avast was one of them until 5308 build. Unfortunately, with this build Avast has major problem that were confirmed by many other beta testers. After installing Avast, other programs started to lock up to the point that I was unable to close them. I was also unable to restart/shut down Vista. Removing Avast fixed the problem.
Welcome to the forums, darekd. 
I am sure the Avast team will be glad you posted that info. Hopefully, they can work on the problem and soon have a fix.
Please come back often, learn more, and maybe help others.
If you could report the major problem you talk of and perhaps it may be able to be resolved and identify if this an issue with Vista or avast! We do have others on the forum using the vista beta and no other reported problems, so it would help if you could expand on the problem/s you had. I’m sure the Alwil team would welcome the input.
Since vista is a beta product there are likely to be issues before it goes live, one of the facts of life in beta testing.
Welcome to the forums.
I’ve not had any problem with Avast in previous versions of Vista.
How do I report problem to Alwil?
Doing what you’ve done, opening a thread in forums.
Or you can send an email to support (at) avast.com 
The forums as has been mentioned, is probably a very good location as it is well supported and frequented by the Alwil Team. Not to mention it will also bring any issues with vista/avast to the notice of other avast/vista beta users. So if they are experiencing the same issue (or not) they might also be able to give input.
darekd, that is quite strange, I’m testing Avast extensively on Vista build 5308 and it seems to be working just fine here (well, except for some known problems). No freezes, no lockups…
I guess your using the latest version of avast, right? (fresh install).
Thanks
Vlk
I used the most recent version from Alwil site.
There is a tread in Microsoft beta discussion newsgroup (application compability) that I started that has number of responses. There are people that are having the same problems as I have and there are also users that have no problems. So it might be related to hardware (drivers) conflict.
These are some of the responses to the tread:
I wasn't complaining, because I had so much trouble getting 5308 installed, that I hadn't gotten around to installing Avast! until yesterday and figuring out it broke things today. I'm ready to complain, now :) .Seriously, it was an awful experience. I couldn’t kill the apps (like
IE & Firefox; Journal could be used with no issues) I tried to run
before the machine hung up, though I could kill other processes (if I
ran Task Manager before things blew up). The only way to recover was
to force the PC off. Maybe I’ll give McAfee a try.
[color=Blue][sup]So do I (custom install-disable webshield). Did try Avast, but my computer stopped responding so I had to do a manual power off. Started in safe mode with the Administrator account, but was denied to remove Avast. The account did not have enough rights??? Luckily I have an excellent running XP x64 on the first partition. And from there I could delete Avast.
Same experience here; I am quite concern about running Vista without an AV. Hopefully Avast will fix it. if I remember correctly after one of the latest updates I did not have any issue with WebShield enabled too; not 100% sure though. I tried Nod32 and it does not work. Have a nice day
Hello,on my Dell Inspiron 8600 Avast Antivirus 4.6 Pro (the latest build) runs
very well. No iussues, no slow downs. Nothing disabled.
On my main PC (P4 3,2 GB, Gforce 6800GT, Asus P4P800 deluxe 8600 Avast
Antivirus 4.6 Pro doesn’t run, No Internet, slow down, Black screen while
rebooting, no uninstall.
Here the same problems. Before installing Avast everyting works great. After installing Avast several programs are locked and even the taskmanager wouldn't work anymore. after uninstalling Avast everyting works great again.
Vista 5308 Avast install log extract
03.03.2006 21:18:30 file: Direct move of file: D:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\INF\AMD64\Aavmker4.sys
03.03.2006 21:18:30 file: Installed file:D:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\INF\AMD64\Aavmker4.sys
03.03.2006 21:18:30 file: Extract: tried to extract ‘aswMon.sys’ from pkg ‘av_pro_core’ but failed miserably.
03.03.2006 21:18:30 system: Reboot set by changed resident C:\Windows\system32\drivers\aswmon.sys
03.03.2006 21:18:30 system: Error copying driver file C:\Windows\system32\drivers\aswmon.sys (0x00000002)
03.03.2006 21:18:30 system: Reboot set by changed resident C:\Windows\system32\drivers\aswmon2.sys
03.03.2006 21:18:30 system: Error copying driver file C:\Windows\system32\drivers\aswmon2.sys (0x00000002)
03.03.2006 21:18:30 registry: Set registry: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aswMon2\DisplayName=avast! Standard Shield Support
03.03.2006 21:18:30 registry: Set registry: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aswMon2\ErrorControl=1
03.03.2006 21:18:30 registry: Set registry: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aswMon2\Type=2
03.03.2006 21:18:30 registry: Set registry: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aswMon2\Start=2
03.03.2006 21:18:31 general: progress end - forced
03.03.2006 21:18:31 general: progress thread end
Amd 3800+ X2 Processor in DFI LANParty SLI-D
This was todays install package from Avast website run with admin privilege with User Account Protection disabled.
Edit : It does install if run under XP compatibility mode
Can you try to reinstall again?
1)Run avast uninstall utitility
http://files.avast.com/files/eng/aswclear.exe
2)Restart
3)Delete the contents of avast4 folder
4)Run setup
If it fails, send the whole log to my email. Also send me the values of environment variable TEMP in Control Panel - System - Advanced - Environment Variables.
Hi All,
I installed fine (Avast Home 4.6.763) on Vista 5308 64-bit, but then had issues when I tried to use Internet Explorer (64-bit). The whole machine just froze. I could bring up the task manager, but couldn’t kill any of the processes or even log off.
After a hard reboot, things loaded fine. My conclusion so far is that:
a) I should have rebooted after installing Avast (as on reboot, IE7 did load okay, if a little slow).
or
b) Turn off Web Scanning (this seemed to speed up web browsing by about 200% anyway)
I’ll keep testing, and let you guys know if I run into any further problems.
Chod.
Hmm, Vista x64? I’m not sure if the 5308 build already has it implemented, but the 64-bit Vista builds will require all kernel-mode drivers to be digitally signed (which is currently not the case for avast drivers). So they’re not loading at this moment…
This will, of course, be “fixed” some time before Vista goes gold.
BTW Chodberry we’ve been working together with the Microsoft networking group to avoid this exact problem in the upcoming Vista “beta 2” build (or maybe even slightly sooner).
Thanks
Vlk
Hi Vlk,
The drivers seem to load okay in Vista x64, although I noticed the system tray app. it still 32-bit, but who cares about that :). However, after a bit more testing I ran into some other problems.
The build of 5308 I’m using (5308.17) is a degub build, and certainly not “performance tweaked” - so it’s pretty slow on my machine in comparison to WinXP-x32. This may be in part due to the increased amount of RAM the OS requires.
Anyway, what I’m leading to is, after running Avast for a few hours the machine just became so unresponsive/unstable (i.e. no crashes, but seemed to “hang” a lot) I decided to remove it. Now it’s “okay” again - although I’ll not use Vista 5308 for much without a virus scanner active.
I’ll probably re-install over the next few days and play some more, progressively backing off functionality to see what my major problem area(s) is/are, but for now if you have any suggestions, I’d be interested to here them.
Cheers,
Chod.
That’s exactly what I was getting but I don’t run x64. Few days ago I made another attempt to install Avast but result was the same. My computer was unresponsive, slow and some applications hang up.