I have used Avast for several years now.
Register for a new free license every year, but this year the key seems not
to be working. I put it in and everything seems to be fine, but the annoying “Buy/register”/“timeout”
window will pop up every now and then.
I use Win-XP and version 4.8.
I will NOT upgrade to 5 since my EMU soundcard will not working then (latest drivers yes).
Seems to be something om Avast side or will they force me to upgrade to V5?
Well, maybe it’s time to try AVG a chance.
Sure you can still get a key for 4.8, but you also will get the screen for the update.
Why not just update to 5.x…?? It works just fine with XP…!!
asyn
V5 is incompatible with my pro soundcard EMU (Creative professional).
The mixer will not start up. Seems to be a workaround to disable “Behavior Shield” though,
but that feature is nice to have. Or is this feature Avast-specific and is not common
in other antivirus-programs?
Well you still can try and install the 5.1 version, as there were problems with the behavior shield in the beta period, but now it seems to be working normally, if it behaves like before then you could try and do a memory dump, to help avast devs. to find the problem.
And the best way of transition from 4.8 to 5.1 is a clean install :
Uninstall avast from Control Panel (if possible). If, for any reason, you can’t run it, try booting in Safe Mode and doing it from there. Anyway, boot after that.
Run the avast! Uninstall Utility saved on 1. If, for any reason, you can’t run it, try booting in Safe Mode and doing it from there. Anyway, boot after you’ve run it.
Install avast! using the setup saved on 2. Boot.
Register your free copy or add the license key for Pro.
Check and post the results. If, for any reason, you did not solve, try doing the step 3 in Safe Mode anyway.
In the way it works I believe it is specific to avast, others may have similar HIPS style modules, but the problem being there is no standardisation on what HIPS or Heuristics are, so there are many different names and many different interpretation on what they should do.
Currently the behaviour shield is in passive mode where it monitors activity and effectively allows and gathers data to fine tune the behaviour rules/filters. So when it goes active it has amassed a lot of data on what would be considered normal or abnormal behaviour to prevent false positives and to ensure its protection isn’t too weak.
So why we are seeing some of these apparent conflicts is strange in something in a passive mode. But it operates at a low (system) level so it will be in with other drivers and that may be where the conflict occurs. It is also where they are working to resolve those as has happened with some other software from the initial 5.1.864 release to 5.1.889. But I’m sure that there is other ongoing work.
When you say you have disabled it, do you actually mean you have uninstalled the behaviour shield as disabling doesn’t work for some instances ?
If it is just disabled then there may be something else that you can do:
Check the behaviour shield log file for any instance related to your soundcard and you should be able to add that to the trusted processes (in the behaviour shield, expert settings), copy and paste the fill path to the file concerned.
Using notepad open this file C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\report\BehaviorShield.txt (XP location) this may be a hidden location so you need to enable show hidden files and folders if you haven’t already done so.
That’s fine so now copy and paste the C:\WINDOWS\system32\MIDIDEF.EXE into the avastUI, Real-Time Shields, Behaviour Shield, Expert Settings, Trusted Processes and reboot and see if that is enough to allow the soundcard to run.
OK if it has started, don’t know why it would take so long though. It shouldn’t be another exception or it would have been in the log of items allowed, e.g. the behaviour shield considered the behaviour out of the ordinary I guess, but since it is in passive mode allows it.
If this continues to take several minutes to start the EMU sound card then you could disable it, if that doesn’t change anything you could opt to uninstall the behaviour shield. From windows Add Remove Programs, Change/Remove, select Change and uncheck the Behaviour Shield option, click Next and OK your way out, reboot and that should allow you to use the AOL software. See image, for XP OS.
Well, glad that your problem is mostly resolved, but you can still do the dump, to help avast devs and yourself to get rid of the problem at all.
Don’t disable avast, start task manager, start your EMU program, and right click the AvastSVC.exe process in the task manager and choose to “create a memory dump” , after that find the dump and compress it with an archiver(name it uniquely please), and send it to ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming .
To send to ftp, you could just copy and paste the address in a windows folder address bar but without “http://” in front, and drag the archive there.
@ Sparxx
There is a ftp tag in the Reply window that should be used for ftp links or the URL will end up as it did with the http in front or you can wrap it in the ftp tags
