Am running XP-Pro SP3 fully patched and up-to-date. Avast 4.8.1201 fully up to date vps 27 May.
I have a niggling problem. Ever since upgrading to the latest build 1201, every time I manually update which is twice a day, after receiving the update successful dialogue box, whatever I click on, be it the taskbar or an application shortcut, the computer hangs for approx 1 minute to a minute and a half before allowing me to continue.
I either have to wait this required time or do a hardboot via the on/off switch on the tower to be able to continue.
Any ideas? As stated this only started heppening after upgrading to build 1201.
I’m running XP-Home with SP3 and Avast! 4.8.1201, and am not experiencing your problem. Switching off power to the computer is a rather rough way of achieving a reset (disk caches may not be written out properly to name just one possible repercussion). Would I be correct in assuming Alt+Ctrl_Del does not bring up the Task Manager?
You mention an update successful dialogue box, but not the summary dialogue. I did my daily update an hour or so ago and I don’t remember exactly what the sequence was, but if I ask it to update now, it goes through the motions and the last dialogue to show is the summary dialogue. If you are not actually seeing this then perhaps the download and update process is not completely finished. Could you clarify exactly what you see at the end of a download (perhaps leave it for the 1.5 minutes), and also advise what CPU type and CPU speed you have, and what size memory is in your PC.
My other question (just for reference) is what method did you use to update to SP3 - from a full 300+MB download or from the much smaller on line update?
olddog: Thanks for the reply. I don’t think it’s an SP3 issue. I did the full 300MB+ download from download.microsoft(dot)com and not from WU.
As I said in initial post updates complete fully and yes I do see the summary box after downloading on both the vps updater and program updater.
After the update has completed the first thing I did was to call up the Task manager via Ctrl Alt & Del this is how I discovered the program ‘hang’ I am talking about. If I wait for the 1.5 mins it opens and I can view and use. No need to do a hardboot then.
My sequence is to update Avast, update Trojan Hunter 5, check for updates SS&D, check for updates SpywareBlaster, check for updates SAS all running the latest versions and up to date. Only since build 1201 has this problem outlined in my initial post appeared and SP3 was installed when on build 1169.
Have decided to alter vps updating to automatic (check every 120 mins) from Manual update and program updating to ask when update available instead of Manual - seeing as Manual updating is more CPU intensive. See if this cures it.
The Manual update, or even the ‘Ask’ isn’t restricted in the CPU % it will use, although it operates at the Normal priority level, if there are spare CPU cycles (%) it will use them hence the slowing you were noticing.
The Auto VPS update has a CPU restriction not to exceed 30% (I believe) is in fact the best option ‘not’ to slow your system is to continue with the Auto update and to leave the update check at 240.
The program update should also be left at its default ‘Ask’ because that is likely to take much longer than an incremental VPS update you wouldn’t want it to start automatically.
Strangely enough the avast defaults are best as they are designed to put less straign on your system ;D
The only effect the delay will have is one of how long it is before it checks (on first connection and every 240 minutes if you remain connected), it should have no impact on the CPU usage. That is governed as I mentioned above with the auto VPS update using the least CPU %.
DavidR: This has worked. Updated itself today while online, watched CPU usage while updating, nothing untoward - and now the important bit - as soon as the update had installed I attempted to open an application. Voila! no system hang at all.
