I’m using Avast free version on windows 7, 64bit. After updating to 6.0.1367 the behavior shield cannot be stopped. When I try to stop it Avast shows all the proper notices it will usually do and at the end “Module is not running”. However if I carry out an activity monitored by the behav. sh. it still appears as last event analyzed, and the events analyzed counter also continues to run.
I think that by disabling the behaviour shield you are preventing the shield from blocking anything but the underlying service still runs, why do you want it disabled ?
To completly disable the shield you would have to uninstall it, go to control panel\programs and features, double click avast then click change, when you get the popup untick the shields you dont want and accept, you should reboot after running this.
I wonder why they want to disable the Behavior Shield as I have no problem with it on my Windows 7 system.
Hi Tarkov, I thought you might find useful to know that there is a dependency between Script and Behavior Shields: the Script Shield will not work without the Behavior Shields.
So just in case you decide to remove the Behavior Shield, you may want to remove also the Script Shield.
Thank you for your responses. I followed the lead of possible dependencies among shields and fixed the problem this way: closed all shields, opened them and closed only behavior shield. Done this twice and behavior shield began to close properly. I guess it’s a temporary glitch caused by the update during which I kept behavior shield (and file shield) closed others running. By the way I’ve done the closings through avast gui and not through windows program change since I dont want to disable shields completely, but it’s good to know how it can be done in case the need arises.
As for your question why I want to close behav. sh. it’s a somewhat longer story. I keep file sh. and behav. sh. closed at system startup. The main problem I have is Windows often froze at start. Can’t say with certainty what’s it’s cause but one guess is multiple alerts. That’s alerts or confirmation dialogs where firing one becomes dependent on firing another one. In my system this freezes Windows. I can envisage that a situation like this could easily arise: system startup, many programs started at once, one of them tries to fire a confirmation dialog let’s say coupled with a registery change, avast monitoring everything behav. sh. finds this suspicious and fires an alert of its own. In my system this will bring windows to a standstill. After keeping avast file and behav. shields closed at startup I found that the instances of startup freeze were reduced.
I’m glad you were able to resolve your problem. Let us know if you need any further assistance. Thank you.
Instead of disabling File System Shield (or any shield for that matter) at start up (which is NOT recommended), you could try disabling the start up items that may not be indispensable to run right on start up.
In addition, you could try enabling the shields while changing
avast main GUI → settings → troubleshooting → “start avast service only after other system services”. Save and reboot.
Thanks,
Best Wishes.
Thank you for your suggestion. That was a possibility but after some thought I decided not to change avast’s original booting pattern. Instead opted for selective shield closure.
After looking into the matter a little more thoroughly, I should make some corrections to my initial assessment. It turned out that it isn’t a temporary issue but appears permanently. Problem is behavior shield doesn’t stop from gui. In order to stop it some other shields must also be stopped. These are mail, p2p, im shields. Also to keep it stopped at avast startup these shields must be kept stopped. For reference I attach a screenshot of avast gui with behavior shield supposedly stopped but actually showing monitored events. Since a combination of other shields keep behavior shield closed, for me the issue is resolved. Again much thanks to Tetsuo for suggesting interdependencies among real time shields, and also to the other contributors of this thread.
You’re welcome, Tarkov.
However I’m only certain of the strict dependency between Script and Behavior Shields (i.e. the Script Shield will not work without the Behavior Shield). As far as I know you should be able to stop Behavior Shield without keeping other shields stopped - I’m sure more technically experienced users will help you on this.