Network Printer Not working

After the installation of Avast, my networked printer has stopped working on all the computers (home network)with Avast. After uninstalling Avast, printer is fine. I really want to use Avast because it is without doubt the best Anti-malware program that I have ever used. I searched the forum but only found one page relating to this.

I’m sure I have seen this before and If I remember rightly it relates to having another AV or remnants on your system.

Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

Do you use a firewall? Which one?
Any other antivirus in the past, like David asked?

I, too, found a similar problem today after installing Avast. I had uninstalled AVG antivirus and rebooted the system without an antivirus program, then installed Avast. When I try to print to my HP 6980 (wireless network printer), instead of printing on both sides, many blank pages were run through the printer after page 1, then the printer “jammed” and, after ejecting the page, the second page, plus 3 more blank pages moved through the printer. I can’t find where Avast is scanning the printed file, but it’s clearly messing up printing. When I uninstalled AVAST, rebooted, then installed AVG again, the printerworks perfectly. I’d like to switch to Avast, but not if it affects my printing.

Any ideas? I’m willing to try. My system is a Pentium 4 3.20GHz running XP SP3. My firewall is Sygate Personal Firewall (old, great program, no longer independent).

Are there any error messages or events in the event log you can point us at to help with this problem?

nickjhs, HowardNad,

Can you tell us whether you can print (properly, with problems, or not at all) with the following:

(a) Right click on the “a” ball and select “Stop on-access protection”

(b) On access protection On, but Standard Shield terminated

(c) Both Standard Shield and Network Shield Terminated.

I have Windows Vista home basic, GData AV, and Windows Defender (anti-spyware) which is free w/ Vista but have the fire-wall turned off b/c I use w/ GData. Also have network Epson 610 printer. I installed the free version of Malwarebytes and after reboot printer not printing (test page prints ok directly from printer & printer wireless connection also ok). But after rebooting, got error message about blocked programs at start-up - which opened the Windows Defender-lists items as ‘not yet classified’ not sure if that’s the cause - has “Seikon Epson Corp” listed that way but will not let me change those programs to ‘permit’ status. Also my volume & clock icons were removed from notification task bar-conquered that prior to realizing the printer issue-with those I did 2 things -turned user acct control to ‘off’ & also removed ‘iconstreams’ from registry editor (found solutions via online search) after which I was able to add the icons back to the taskbar. Not sure what to do w/ printer; Malwarebytes software version only runs manually, where Windows Defender is supposed to be continually running, so would that be the problem? Thanks for your help!

I just replaced NAV with Avast and encountered this problem as well. In my case, the HP network printer was apparently knocked offline after installing Avast/uninstalling NAV. In Vista, I opened up control panel/printers then right-clicked on the HP icon and selected “Use Printer Online”. Worked for me.