Yesterday, the avast autoupdated. It took an unusual amount of time (>1 hr), but I patiently waited. Then it rebooted, and now, everytime the startup bar on the splash screen hits about 3/4, the computer spontaneously reboots. I’m a recent fan of avast; been using it for only a few months, but it’s never given me any problems before. Of course, it’s never forced me to reboot before.
A new driver or something? That doesn’t like my computer? Anyone else have this kind of problem?
I’m running win2kpro (Japanese edition) on a 1.7 celeron with about 1.3 gigs of ram.
Now I’m downloading a live ubcd so I can go into the registry and remove avast. I like the program a lot, but I think after today I really need to switch to a different anti-virus. I lost an entire day’s productivity for the sake of an update (why it was necessary, I don’t know), and that’s a big deal to me.
Booting into safe mode doesn’t work either. The exact same problem occurs.
I can’t see what’s in any of my folders, because I can’t even get the system to boot up to look.
I’m not sure what version I was updating from. But I’m pretty sure I downloaded the latest one more recently than January, if that answers your question.
That is very strange I have to say. The thing is, avast does not load ANY of its files in Safe Mode. So it cannot really be its drivers (or other modules) that’s causing the problem… :-\
Especially considering how impeccable the timing was–the most recent windows configuration change was clearly avast, since that was what self-installed and rebooted my system.
If avast was not the culprit, than I may have bigger issues than I suspected.
I do have the Win2k Pro CD that came with my computer, but it’s some kind of custom job, including the drivers, etc. (It’s a Mitsubishi Apricot CX Desktop.)
I don’t know what a recovery console is, but I don’t believe I can access it. The CD gives essentially 2 options when you boot from it:
Reformat your hard drive and reinstall everything this computer needs to run.
Remove the CD and power off.
(I shit you not about #2–that’s exactly what it says, albeit in Japanese.)
In 5 hours, I’ll have the ubcd I’m downloading from a friend’s ftp server. Hopefully I’ll be able to use that to get more information on the problem. I had hoped simply to rename the avast folder, so that the startup files couldn’t be accessed, but if the problem is outside of avast, I’m not sure where to start.
I managed to get into the system using a menu option that appeared on the screen that allows you to choose between safe modes. It was called “debug mode” (at least I think that’s what it is in English). Does anyone know what this is, and what it does? My entire system seems to work as normal when I use it. So that’s the great news.
I have no folder called “Minidump” in my WinNT folder.
I uninstalled Avast, but upon reboot, if I don’t hit F8 and choose debug mode, the machine continuously reboots as before. So it’s not an Avast driver issue.
If Avast did corrupt my registry, is there anything I can do to find out where and how? And how to fix it? Error logs? Registry examination tools?
avast does not manage the Registry, so it does not mess your registry…
Maybe you could see Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Events and search for errors and see if you can give us more info in order to help you…
Ah, my mistake. I was under the impression that any program that makes changes to your registry has the potential to corrupt it, and not just programs that are designed to manage it.
I’ve checked the event viewer, and I see nothing suspicious under applications. Under system events, there is a Service Control Manager error (event 7026), right around the time that avast updated and rebooted my system. From what information I have managed to gather from Google, this is indeed related to the boot process, and some people in the past have experienced the problem I described (and had the same event error), but in their cases, completely uninstalling the program (Norton, for example) that had auto-updated/rebooted fixed things. I have already uninstalled avast, however (completely, so far as I can tell).
I think I simply don’t know enough about boot-time errors for this information to be useful to me. Does it give you any clues?
Also, can anyone tell me what “Debug Mode” is, and why my computer might operate completely normally under this mode, yet fail to boot otherwise?
Debug mode makes it possible to attach a kernel debugger to this machine (through a serial cable, for example).
It’s basically an ordinary boot (no restrictions like Safe mode, as far as I know) - with something added; so I find it pretty strange that you could boot into Debug mode, and not in the “normal” way…
Sorry to revive a somewhat old thread, but I still have this issue, and thought maybe there were some more ideas floating around as to how to fix it.
I don’t understand why debug mode works either; all I know is that I have to press F8 to get to the menu where you choose from Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Network Support, Debug Mode, etc. If I choose Safe Mode, I get the same terminal reboot problem described above. If I choose debug mode, it boots normally.
Unfortunately, no. I use win2kpro, not xp, and it’s a custom job for this mitsubishi computer, which means I don’t have the options that owners of standard win2k discs (I assume) have.
I’d love it if someone could solve the mystery of why it boots normally when I choose debug mode. If that question can be answered, it would be a big step in the direction of identifying the problem, I think.