This is a laptop, with no external connections, unless you count the WiFi card.
Laptop? Which brand? I’m asking because it might be a bit more difficult to press the ScrollLock key on a non-101 key keyboard. Have you tried it with the Fn key down?
I apologize for frustration this may cause. I decided that rather than trying again, and perhaps stumbling onto the answer of key combination to do the dump, and then sending my RAM contents that I don’t really feel comfortable with sending, I tried a reinstall. The reinstall didn’t really go well, and I think I’ve just spent way too much time on this for now.
I really like Avast on my desktops and will continue with it there, but have for now returned to what was working well for me with this laptop. I do appreciate all the help, and hope you can understand my decision to move on for now.
Well, no problem, I understand and respect your decision… :-\
Thanks for your time
Vlk
I appear to have found the problem. I deactivated PGP’s auto wipe on delete option, reinstalled Avast a couple days ago, have done updates including today’s, and all has been problem free. When I was using NAV, that PGP option gave me difficulty with some file deletions, leading me to think it might be a similar complication with Avast. BTW, AVG has no problem with that option.
I decided to try again after seeing how difficult it is with AVG to simply delete an email received in Pegasus that has the Netsky attached, and having seen how easy it was with Avast on my desktop. Since I receive that on a daily basis, the inconvenience was significant.
An issue with Avast, is that I can’t do email scanning with it, since it won’t allow me to send email out through my RoadRunner SMTP server as being from my mccune.cc email address. This is even when just setting it for incoming scanning.
fwiw:
on ony of the systems i administer - xp pro german with avast!4 german - these freezes have happened three times in arow now. - waiting for the next iavs update …
what permissions are rewuired for avast! in %systemroot%temp?
I have to admit I was wrong.
I solved my problem few days ago. I think the problem was c:\windows\temp directory where avast! saves/deletes some temporary files during the definition update. As a user I didn't have enough rights to this directory (I was even unable to view the content of it). I solved this by moving the XP's temp directory to the shared folder. After that I've had no problems.
This problem seems to have nothing to do with c:\windows\temp directory. I still have the same problem. I didn’t know this because I was using avast with “Ask when update is available” setting for a while (it works just fine). Now I’m using the setting “Automatic” and administrator account and my computer has freezed three times a row also.
I don’t know anymore. I’ve tried almost everything. Maybe it’s related to XP’s language version somehow…? I’m using a finnish version of XP Home.
– Jeccu –
I don't know anymore. I've tried almost everything. Maybe it's related to XP's language version somehow...? I'm using a finnish version of XP Home.
Mh. I have three machines here. Two with English OS and English avast and one with German OS and German avast. The problem only occurs on the “German” machine.
Hmmm. Very interesting… I was just informed that my mother-in-law’s computer does the same thing, hangs after automatic update. She also has a finnish version of XP Home and avast Home.
So, the question is: Is there anyone at this forum who is using other than english version of XP and avast with automatic update setting? Does it work?
– Jeccu –
I know you have a problem but the answer to your question will be infinite…
I think there are tons of non-English users for whom avast! updates work perfectly. In Portuguese everything ok both for Windows XP Home and Professional. 
It did it again!
Todays virus definiton update freezes my girlfriends system (XP Pro German w/ avast!4 Home German) while my system (XP Pro English w/ avast!4 Home English) updated just fine.
I would really like to hear an official comment form a member of the avast! team on this behavior.
Drahnier, please run command
ashbug /setuplog
Put some details in the window (for example this link), your username here and your mail address. Be sure you’re running the last available program version.
just did so - actually you will get this crash report three times because I couldn’t figure out how to use newlines in the crash debug’s dialog box …
Additional notes:
- This freeze does not happen with all data base updates. But it happened with the last one and at least four previous updates.
- Whenever my girl fried showed me her freezed computer she had been working with Microsoft Word (Office 2002 Suite).