computer shuts down, blue screen cannot use avast

Hi, Please someone help? I really like AVAST but since installing it, OK for few days then it started to crash when I right clicked the icon by clock to start avast, it checked memory then there is a small interface and as soon as I press anything there it makes computer crash and I get a blue screen with error message. So I thought not to touch that but now it starts doing it all the time so I had to stop it and I have no idea what to do. I have windows xp pro and use xsoft and search and destroy. Any ideas? ???Please help and thanks in advance. By the way excellent site, very impressed with even a spell checker, cool.

Did you have any other anti-virus installed before avast! - if so, what and how did you remove it?

Also xsoft has been flagged previously as a rogue/suspect anti-spyware program, check it out at http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm, this is worth bookmarking for the future, you can then check before installing any anti-spyware/adware.

Try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, avast! Anti-Virus, Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow. You need to be on-line to do this.
If that doesn’t work try, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot.

Hi David, thanks for quick response. I had unistalled it by the time I read this reply, so will re-install and see, but not holding much hope, the web page you gave me is excellent. Before I had Mc Afeee and i have had Panda and Kaperski but Avast was great, no problem on laptops. :-\

No problem, welcome to the forums.

When you install avast again pay attention and see if there are any warning messages which may relate to previously installed AVs that still have remnants left. If that happens avast may not fully install to avoid a conflict.

katipo wrote:

Before I had Mc Afeee...

Was Mcafee the last AV you used ?

Mcafee was my first AV about 10 years ago. I don’t how well Mcafee uninstalls now, but back then it left all kinds of registry entries behind.

One of the registry entries would not allow me to use MS Outlook as the program would give me an error every time I tried to launch it. As it turned out it was one of the many registry entries left behind that caused the problem.

I use Registry First Aid to check my registry, but of course if you run Regedit, you can do a simple search for any “Mcafee” entries.

Universal reply for this type of problem is:

Find a miniXXXX.dmp file in your c:\windows\minidump folder. It will be created each time Windows crashes (into the BlueScreen). Zip this file and send it to my email: rypacek (at) asw.cz, or to vlk’s: vlk (at) asw.cz

From the dump we can (sometimes) read more info, at least in what driver it crashed. If it is in avast we can start the search for bugs, if it is some 3rd party driver we can try to eliminate the problem from the other end.

Lukor.

is their a specific program used for reading dmp files? as i have been having similar problems but not Avast! related and i would like to inspect the minidumps myself.

Windows Debugger
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/Debugging/default.mspx