Yesterday my reliable (working great) Windows XP SP3 computer crashed with a BSOD after I upgraded Avast from version 7 to version 8.0.1482.
I managed to get it working again using a restore point that took me back to version 7.0.1474.
I intended trying again today until I got a phone call from a friend this morning saying that her XP SP3 computer had also crashed with a BSOD after she had upgraded to version 8 and rebooted as requested.
So I searched the internet to see if others had also experienced similar problems. It appears that some people did have this problem but only with XP.
Windows 7 users appeared to be unaffected by the upgrade.
My search took me to this link for the Computeractive magazine forums.
As you can see, two of the posters using XP also had BSODs after upgrading.
The first poster posted a screenshot of the BSOD that is the same as the one that I got.
He then ran Who Crashed and posted another screenshot showing the results. The report blamed 2 Avast drivers for the crashes. See the screenshot in page 2 of the above link.
A possible common factor might be down to also having ZoneAlarm as their firewall.
So it appears that it is not an isolated problem, and is only affecting some XP users.
If it comes to a choice, I will keep ZA and just install a different AV program.
Is Avast investigating this situation?
Does Avast intend to issue a patch so that affected XP users can continue to use Avast?
I would be grateful if an Avast moderator replied to this post ASAP so that I can decide what road to go down.
I had the same problem, uninstalled Avast 8 in safe mode, reinstalled it===> BSOD
So, I uninstalled Avast 8, ran a clean-up in safe mode, installed Avast 7, everything working again. I use ZAV free firewall.
I opened a ticket with the Avast help desk, attaching several minidumps. So far they don’t have a solution, except to uninstall ZA. They even pretend Avast 7 is not comparible with ZA. Which of course is not true! As we know!
For use with Avast Free Antivirus 8 I recommend Online Armor Free or Privatefirewall.
Comodo Firewall can interfere with Avast and tends greatly to the Registry power increase as a result of the interaction of the two softwares.
The most Appropriate firewall to use with Avast is the developer of the company itself, but that is available in 8 Avast Internet Security (paid).
Yes, you certainly are well secure with Avast Free Antivirus 8 combined with the use of Sandboxie.
I only recommend to you as extra measure of protection in real time using the browser extension for BitDefender TrafficLight which is good in detecting malware and phishing sites.
Thanks ddalbiez for your fast and helpful response.
The more I research this, the more disgruntled XP users with BSODs that I find.
Yes - this problem exists, and I would think that Avast should be treating this problem as a matter of urgency.
I found your reply from the Avast Help Desk rather alarming. If they consider that Avast 7 is not compatible with ZA, it doesn’t fill one with confidence that a solution is imminent. :o
Maybe a credible Avast rep will spot my thread, and give us a reply that makes sense.
So my questions are - “Is Avast actively pursuing this known bug?” - “Does Avast actually acknowledge that this problem exists?”
Actually I think my ticket did not get further than level 1. I hope the problem will be escalated to level 2 (people able to read a minidump). I think it would be best for all users having this XP SP3 / Avast 8 / ZA free firewall problem to raise a ticket with the Avast helpdesk. The more similar tickets they will receive, the more attention they will pay to the problem.
What is more confusing and worrying is that power users of this forum seem to just deny the existence of the problem with Avast 8.
There does seem to be an issue between avast and ZoneAlarm at the moment but this is also nothing new as the two programs have had many conflicts in the past, as to whether it a ZA problem or an avast problem we are yet to hear.
To be quite honest my choice od AV would far outweigh the firewall, Online Armor - Privatefirewall - Comodo 6 - Outpost Firewall all work great with avast.
Nope, that’s not the case with respect to XP vs Win7 … there are posts here in this area where users with Win7 have gotten BSOD with version 8 … including myself.
Now, yesterday A.M. I got the notice from my Avast about updating to version 8. I updated it and within 2 minutes BSOD appeared.
What I’ve done … because I had somewhat the same issues with going to version 7…
Rebooted my computer and within 1 minute Bsod came back.
Rebooted my computer in safe-mode with Network, and did some browsing in this forum and found
some other users (with Win7 and XP) getting BSOD’s
After reading them I decided to download and install memtst86 and tested my memory for about 6 hours … two mem-passes
in that time with no errors… part of my BSOD indicated a possible memory issue.
While in safe-mode I download Avast uninstaller and the latest version 7 of Free Avast…
Booted back into normal mode and it ran for about 6-8 minutes then BSOD
Booted in safe-mode again, uninstalled AVAST8, rebooted into normal mode, installed version 7
Everything was fine for about 3 hours and then Avast notified me that an update was available and I didn’t notice that the
message was about version 8 … and not an update to version 7 … I clicked update (my bad :'() and it updated to 8 and a BSOD
happened within about 2 minutes.
Got back into safe-mode, uninstalled version 8, booted into normal mode and installed version 7 … AND, I won’t update again
untill I’ve seen/got an absolute fix for this… and now I a little concerned about the hundreds of Avast recommendations I’ve made
to user that I’ve made on the MozillaZine board. And, all my friends not use Avast and I hope that it doesn’t come back to
bite me.
My system uses Windows Firewall and only Avast. “All” OS and app. software up to date.
So, if anybody has a perfect cure for this I’d be real happy so that I can feel better about my recommendations.
I’m just a simple fellow, so I’ll keep it simple. :
So there is a history of many conflicts in the past. Is this total war or what?
Both Avast Free and ZA Free are two of the most popular programs in the Universe, and many, many users like and use this combination.
It cannot be in anyone’s interest to have these excellent programs in inevitable conflict whenever one of them upgrades to a new version. My Granddad once gave me excellent advice - “Look boy, in life you’ll make many mistakes, but try to not keep repeating them.”
Conclusion
With this history of conflict in mind, I would advise Avast programmers to fully exhaustively test for any possible potential conflicts with ZA prior to issuing an upgrade.
This will save many loyal, contented Avast aficionados (like me) from all this hassle.
Come on lads - let’s get this patch out before any more damage is done.
(This post is going to be in real simple terms as I’m pretty much a computer novice)
I’ve got Windows XP SP3 and ZA free firewall, and I seem to have the same problem with possibly an added twist. After unsuspectingly updating my free avast 7.0.1474 to the new 8.0… it went into to a crash loop → crash, reboot, crash(without even properly making it to desktop first), reboot, crash etc…
After some juggling I managed to do a system restore but then avast free claimed to be avast pro (the control interface was titled pro) with the “trial expired, please register” -comment prominently on display, so not really understanding it, I uninstalled avast completely, and tried a clean avast free download directly from avast.com (version 8 since nothing else available). Same thing, back to the crash-reboot-crash cycle.
So now I’ve given up on avast and downloaded a different antivirus, which is a shame because I’m also a big avast fan and despite some update issues in the past (which were always relatively promptly resolved and fixed by avast), the problem has never been as severe as this before.
I hope this one will be solved as well, so I (and others) can get back to using avast again.
Alternatively, if anyone can post a direct link here to where they managed to find a download to the old free avast 7.0.1474 -version I’d be just as happy to go back to that.
You’ll see from my posts above that version 8 on this machine had nothing to do with any other firewall present in this system… I use Windows FW…
And, I’ve also FTP’d the file generated by Avast “Generate the Support Package in avast! user interface” … though I was using version 7 to do that… and, I posted again asking about those email addresses … not sure what to do with them…
Anyway, can you tell me if that soon to be release will cover things other that the Firewall issues posted around here?
Thanks.
Just an update… thought the list of items fixed on the release note above didn’t cover what I was seeing in my BSOD’s I figured I give it a try… downloaded it, uninstalled version 7 using the uninstaller, installed Version 8 and my system ran for 3+hours this morning without a problem… looks good to me ;D
As the OP of this thread, I’d better give you an update.
This morning I had another go at upgrading from version 7 to the new patch 8.0.1483 on my XP SP3 computer.
No conflicts with my ZA firewall this time. No BSOD and everything working again with no problems.
My thanks to the Avast team for their efforts and successful fix.
