Gonna install Avast! again if...

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi, there! I downloaded Avast! 4.5 Home Edition (from download.com) yesterday and after awhile it made my system BSOD the following screens:

  • PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA (the first couple of times)
  • IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (sometimes)

It was REALLY unpleasant…and it took my system down (even when not in Windows). After a couple of hour I formatted and installed Windows again. I left Avast! out and everything seems to be working fine (I’ve run some tests, and the system appears to be rock solid). Now, I’ve read some reports in this forum about version 4.5.xxx causing these BSODs, but I really like Avast!, so I’d like to install it again. My question is, has this problem been solved in recent versions, or should I go for another AV?

Thanks in advance =)

2

AFAIK there’s no known BSOD-related problem in avast at the moment. From the reports we have from Microsoft (I realize that not everyone who has a bluescreen uses the Report to MS button though - but most people do, especially if the problem persists), I can say that a blue screen has happened on about 0.06% of machines with avast installed - which is, according to MS folks, about the same number (statistically) as people with totally screwed-up systems (faulty RAMs, terribly overclocked CPU’s, bad HDD’s etc…). Of course, this even doesn’t mean that avast is the guilty one, it’s just that someone had a blue screen and avast was installed (so it’s one of the suspects).

Cheers
Vlk

3

BTW pity that you reformatted your HDD so instantly, I could’ve had a look at the minidumps that got generated during the crashes and give you an estimate of who/what was responsible for the issue… :slight_smile:

4

FYI Pse, that latest version of Avast is 4.6.603 :wink:

5

Thanks for your fast replies, guys =).
Well, to tell you the truth, this is a brand new system, and nothing had been installed recently in the system that could have caused such errors. If I had known about these forums back when I formatted the HD, I would have given you the dumps, but as I totally screwed up the SATA controller drivers (which I thought were the ones causing the problem), I just formatted. Later on, I started to believe it was a hardware error, since I had the same BSOD while installing XP again. I turned off the system for a couple of hours, and I tried to install XP again, but this time, I rised a bit the DDR memory voltage setting in the BIOS. The system seemed to work fine after that, but I have not installed Avast! again since then.
The problems described here previously about BSODs related with Avast! seem to be the same I had. In fact, one of the errors was about a serious NTFS driver problem (ntfs.sys). That also means it could be the harddrive, but there hadn’t been any corruption issues in the previous installation, so I discarded that option. So I ran several Sandra tests and tried to run memtest86 after reinstalling WXP (this time successfuly and without any errors so far). I don’t think any drivers in my system are causing this, I have SP2 and all my drivers are WHQL certified. My system is NOT overclocked at all and it’s running very conservative settings.
So far so good, the only thing I have not installed yet is Avast! and everything seems to be fine. I’ll do some more burn-up tests on this machine to see if there are any instability problems.
It should be noted Avast! was the last thing I had installed in my previous WinXP installation (which was fresh) before the errors started showing up, and that it was 4.5 Home Edition (the one available in download.com) and not 4.6, which appears to be the current one. Another thing I noticed is that the BSOD happened when the system accesed a big file (760MB). In fact, the BSOD happened a couple of seconds after that, about 10 to 20 sec. later. It also happened if I tried to manually scan the file using Avast! (doing right click on it, and then selecting the Scan option). In that case the BSOD also ocurred 20 sec. after that.
I’ll post back with more information about this as soon as I finish testing my system.

[EDIT] My guess is that Avast! 4.5 triggered the same errors that other people were discussing, but here in my system. Those errors might be linked directly to the memory (as a Page Fault in Non Paged Area is usually caused by a driver that doesn’t have enough physical memory, right?). Ramping up the voltage on the memory modules may have given my system a bit more of stability, but I’m still testing it. If everything goes well I’ll set up a restore point and install Avast! 4.6.
AV apps tend to stress the filesystem, the harddisk controllers and the memory, so that may have triggered the BSOD. I’ll post back with more results.

Oh, and BTW, I’m using Windows’ Firewall, I don’t have any heating problems in the system, and I had disabled the Network Shield from Avast!. =)

One last possibility (though highly unlikely) is that the AV was sort of “overloading” the NTFS subsystem when accessing so many files…then, while trying to access one BIG file, it took the system down…(perhaps by making the NTFS driver run out of memory?)

6

Hi Pse, wow, what a long post :slight_smile:

AV apps tend to stress the filesystem, the harddisk controllers and the memory, so that may have triggered the BSOD

I second that. I’ve seen a number of crashes (crash dumps) where an AV was the main suspect but at the end of the day, it was concluded to be a HW problem. The crash was indeed near the AV code but that was only a coincidence - not much of a surprise though as AV’s are usually one of the most active pieces of a system [unless a complicated model is just being rendered in 3D-Studio ;D])…

Those errors might be linked directly to the memory (as a Page Fault in Non Paged Area is usually caused by a driver that doesn't have enough physical memory, right?).

Not really. The real cause of PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA is usually quite difficult to debug. In most cases, it is simply a driver error. A driver uses a pointer (accesses a memory location) that is invalid. True, in some cases, this may be a hardware problem - but usually not. In any case, the system should be able to handle low-memory conditions without a crash!

Actually, given a full crash dump, I have some tricks to tell you (with a reasonable degree of reliability) whether the problem is caused by a faulty (or low-voltage) RAM or not…

Cheers
Vlk

7
Not really. The real cause of PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA is usually quite difficult to debug. In most cases, it is simply a driver error. A driver uses a pointer (accesses a memory location) that is invalid. True, in some cases, this may be a hardware problem - but usually not. In any case, the system should be able to handle low-memory conditions without a crash!
Oh, now I see, thanks for clearing that up. I thought that was the case 'cause I read somewhere that that BSOD was mainly caused by drivers trying to read or write somewhere where they shouldn't, so I incorrectly inferred that was caused due to low physical memory available. In fact, I read in some Microsoft KB article that in some cases this problem was solved by adding more RAM to the system (or downsizing your filesystem structure), so I inferred this was caused by low memory available to drivers. This should not be the case, as this machine currently has 512MB, which should be sufficient.

In any case, I’d be interested in hearing any tips you may have, as I’m currently testing the system to see how stable it is. So far, everything seems to be working correctly…(except for those crapy HP printer drivers ;)). Now I’m off to play HL2 Demo, which should be able to stress my system further… Oh, it’s so hard to make sure everything works well ::).

8

WOW, WOW! It just DUMPed/BSODed on me at last! In fact, I wasn’t even playing HL2, I was just going out of these forums while listening to some music!
This time it was related to a file named “win32k.sys”.
Well, I guess Avast! was not related at all…I think this must have something to do with either the memory modules (which are generic) or the PSU. :frowning: It’ll take me some time to get new memory modules…
I’ll set slower timings for the memory and the CPU just to get more stability to use the system in light tasks… :-
Would you mind giving me those tips on how to determine whether the memory is failing? =)

9

Is this by change a HP/Compaq?

10

No, no, this is a typical computer clone. I talked to a guy who works in a computer store and gave him a list of everything I wanted. I asked him to get Corsair, Samsung or Kingston modules…but as they didn’t have them in stock, the guys who built this thing just put some Generic brand mem in it. I thought “well, yeah, I mean, they must have built many systems like this, so they should know these modules are working OK”. So I didn’t say anything, and it was cheaper (though, somewhat slower, as these modules are rated 3-3-3-8 at DDR400).
One thing I noticed is that this happened to me after 7 hours of continous use…could the memory modules be overheating? I can see one of those IDE flat cables going just over the module I’ve installed…

[EDIT] ARGH, I’ll have to see whether I can take it out of the way…And it’s such a pain to move this thing out of its place to open it…Oh, well…It must be the 10th time I do it! :cry:

11

Not very likely overheating, but it can happen.
It is easy to test, leave the case open and see if it happens again.
If so, it is not a heating problem.

12

Well, I’m not sure that would help…there’s a fan on the side of the case…By opening it, I’d be taking that fan out…so I don’t think it’d help. The IDE cable I have over the module may be stopping air flow from reaching the module… I guess the only thing to do is open it and check it by myself…oh, paaaain!

Hey, I’m sorry…I shouldn’t be discussing this thing in these forums, as we’ve seen it’s not related to the AV…sorry, Mods, I’ll leave ASAP, thanks for all your help =)
Though, I wouldn’t mind some should anyone want to give it =)

13

Well, I’ve set the memory to DDR200, so I guess it’s the memory after all…I’ll stress-test the system to see if it BSODs again…

[EDIT] Later I set the memory to DDR333 and started HL2… I played for about an hour or an hour and a half and everything went well. I exited HL2 and went into Windows. Steam crashed after that. 5 minutes later, I got a BSOD regarding NTFS.sys. I’m now running in DDR266. I’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and BTW, I did check the modules had some airflow, and they do, so it doesn’t seem to be related to overheating.

14

If you want, I can have a brief look at your dump(s). I’ll need full dumps.
Enable them by going to Control Panel → System → Advanced → Startup and Recovery Settings → Write Debugging Information - Complete Memory Dump. (a restart will be needed for the change to become effective).

This will create a file \windows\memory.dmp at each crash, with size exactly the same as your physical RAM (1GB?).
The file is usually very well compressible.

When you have the file, let me know - we’ll find a way how to deliver to it me (probably by a ftp upload).

Thanks
Vlk

15

Thanks, man…I only have minidumps right now, so I’ll set full dumps a wait until it BSODs on me again. I’ll set the memory back to DDR400. My physical memory is 512MB, so that should be the size of the dump…I hope I can compress it to 1:10 at least, which compression scheme do you think I should use to compress it? Bzip2, ACE, RAR, or a simple deflate? 7Zip?

16

I guess it won’t make much difference… so I’d say use RAR with 4MB dictionary.

17

Hey, there, just a small update. I set back my memory to DDR400, all the memory timings to auto, and the voltage to auto as well (those were the settings it had the first time I used it). I saved all BIOS settings and allowed the computer to reboot. Guess what? Blank screen! No beeps! Nothing! Either the modules have died a horrible death, or they have destroyed the memory controller in the Athlon64! Now I’m angry as hell! As a last resort, I tried clearing the CMOS manually…with no luck. Now I have a totally useless system! ARGH!
Well, I thank you all, you’ve been really helpful, even after we had realized the problem was not related to Avast! at all!
I’ve already talked to the guys who built the system, and I’ve asked them to give me another memory module (a functional one)…So I guess I’ll have to wait until they get it. Thank you again, and good luck! I’m sorry for bringing this issue to these forums =( And don’t worry, I’ll be using Avast! as soon as I get this thing to work :wink:

18

Thanks for letting us know that it was not an avast issue (hopefully).
Please come back should you have any problems with avast (or just feel like missing the forum :))
Cheers Vlk

19

That’s strange… try to remove the modules and put them back. If you have more modules, try to use only one of them - maybe it’ll boot again.

20

Thanks for your tip, Igor. I would have done what you said, but, to tell you the truth, I don’t want the guys who built the system to tell me it was my fault or whatever. I’ll just let them deal with the whole thing…in fact, I have just come back from the store, where I left them the whole case with everything in it (I took out my HDs, of course ;)). Thanks anyway =).