PC freezes while doing a virus scan. Help please

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have an IBM Thinkpad. Intel 1.7ghz processor and 1.24gig of ram with XP Pro Service pack 3. I had Avast home installed for about a year now. In the last few weeks whenever I try to do a virus scan it will start out fine but about half way through the scan the computer will freeze. I have to manually restart it to get it going again. I can run Superantispyware without a problem. I uninstalled Avast Home and tried CA Antivirus. The Ca has the same problem. It will start a scan then the computer freezes. I did get the CA to do a complete scan in safe mode and it did not find any virus at all. I would like to reinstall the Avast as I like it a lot better. Any ideas why it keeps freezing? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

2

Do you have any AV installed alongside/before avast?

Moreover, does it freeze in a particular file or end up freezing randomly?

3

Avast was the only AV installed. I never run more than one AV. It seems to just freeze randomly.

Thanks for your help .

4

Check the folder \data\log
Are there any files called unpXXXX (where XXXX is a random number) or *.mdmp there?
If so, send them to vlk (at) avast.com
They may contain more information about the problem (maybe a link to this thread).

I know it’s very technical, but Vlk explains how to create a dump file here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=22636.msg187340#msg187340 and here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23283.msg193594#msg193594 :wink:

But it would be the way to analyze what is going on in your computer…

5

I am also facing similar problem. I will say that avast seems to scan 37% in through scan mode with scan compressed file included. After that it hangs at different folder locations. I will check the number of files scanned before it hangs and tell you later. But it is always 37% on my 160 GB HDD with partitions C and F.

6

Do you see a hard disk activity (when it freezes)? Is only the program frozen, or the whole computer (possibly with mouse cursor)?

You can go to the program settings and turn on the creation of the report file (with “OK files” to be included as well in the report). This way, you can find out where the scan really stopped (it’s going to be close to the end of the report).

After avast! disappears, check the end of the report file - the “troublesome” file is likely to be close to the end (close in the sense that this particular file will probably not be written in the report, but the previous one will be the last line, so it shouldn’t be hard to guess). They would certainly like to have this file - if it really causes problems to avast! - so that they could fix the problem.

The report file created (if you turned it on in program settings) will be (default location) at \Data\Report\Simple User Interface.txt

Do you use ZoneAlarm?
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=38353.msg321609#msg321609