BSOD starting Micrografx Designer 4

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi. I still use Micrografx Designer 4 from 1993 because its image manipulation component, PhotoMagic, has the best clone tool ever. This has worked fine until the Avast! upgrade to 5.1.864. Now I get a BSOD when trying to start it. The problem is caused by aswsp.sys. Computer is Dell Vostro 220 running XP/SP3. Disabling all shields has no effect. Any ideas, please? (Apart from “use Photoshop” :slight_smile: )

2

Do you have the corresponding minidump file in C:\Windows\Minidump?
It should tell us what went wrong…

3

If you do find the minidump (its timestamp should match the time of the BSOD), please upload it to ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming and post a note here, or send it by e-mail to pk.
Thanks.

4

Hi, thanks for the quick response. Believe it or not, I’ve never used ftp before, but I just installed the FireFTP client for Firefox and attempted to upload the minidump as instructed. I got a message saying “Transfer done, but failed to open directory”, whatever that means, so I don’t know if it worked or not. The dump is Mini010411-01.dmp. I’ve also never used forums like this before, so I’m treading water :slight_smile: You also said I could email it to pk, but who is pk and what address? Sorry for the ignorance - I’ve had a computer for 16 years, but never done anything like this before. John. (old!)

5

Thanks - this is known bug, and it was already fixed (aswSP!WsVerifyUnicodeString+56).
Turn behavior shield off and please wait for new program update (maybe tomorrow).

6

Gosh! Seems I got the ftp right after all - there’s life in the old dog yet ;D
Many thanks and Happy New Year. John

7

Welcome to the forums, oldsheffielder :slight_smile:

If you hover your pointer over the blue pk in igor’s post and click it, it will take you to his profile where you would have found his email address.
No need to now, of course, but the blue is an indication of a link that can be used.

Just a helpful hint since you are new to forums like this. :slight_smile:

8

Thanks for that, CharleyO. Much appreciated - nice to meet such helpful people.
Cheers!

9

Just for the record, folks, the problem I have with Designer 4 also happens with an old Oxford dictionary. What these two programs have in common is that they are old 16-bit software from the nineties. Turning off the Behavior Shield doesn’t fix the problem, so I uninstalled the shield and now both programs work fine. I’ll wait for the program update to come through, then try that shield again, but for now I’m chugging along fine

10

See if the problem it’s already fixed on the new version.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=68927.0

11

Thanks SilkO - just installed the new version and both the old programs now work fine.

Well done folks :slight_smile: