PFN_LIST_CORRUPT caused by Avast! Free

I am running Avast 5.0.594 and Windows XP Pro SP3.

I randomly get PFN_LIST_CORRUPT BSODs, maybe once a day or so.

After running Driver Verifier with all settings checked apart from “Low Resources Simulation”, I get a BSOD on boot with just the “ALWIL Software” drivers checked. If I uncheck them and check all the other non-Microsoft drivers, the system boots fine.

The ALWIL drivers are aavmker4.sys, aswfsblk.sys, aswmon2.sys, aswrdr.sys, aswsp.sys, aswtdi.sys.

I haven’t pinpointed it to the exact driver yet, as it requires me to reboot twice to test each driver which takes quite a bit of time. I suppose I could do it if it would really help you to resolve the problem, as I do like Avast and I wouldn’t like to go use a different antivirus software.

Any ideas?

This is one of the hardest BSODs, because this error indicates mis-handled kernel-mode memory block at some point. The faulty driver isn’t blamed by BSOD, because the corruption is reported at the time of discovery, not the time of occurrence (so BSOD reports other driver which found it out). You can send me a couple of the latest minidump files, but I’m not sure if it helps me much – switching from minidump to kernel dumps would be better.

When did you start receiving these BSODs? Have you installed new apps lately?

What Driver Verifier with “Low resources simulation” does it just sometimes returns “there’s no enough memory” error if a tested driver asks to allocate some memory. This won’t discover the faulty driver, because PFN BSOD means, that memory internal structures were corrupted somehow.

I’d try to test memory (memtest86), uninstall some apps which use kernel-mode drivers, see if it helps… uninstall avast… that might gradually uncover something but it’s quite tedious…

This laptop is new, and the PFN_LIST_CORRUPT errors started after I installed Avast (although I installed it on my second day).

I ran driver verifier with all the settings checked APART from “Low resources simulation”. The BSOD I kept getting on startup then was something generic about a faulty driver on the kernel stack - it didn’t specify which driver, as I said I just kept running the verifier with fewer drivers checked, until I could “pinpoint” the problem.

I have uninstalled Avast for now, so I’ll see if the problem persists.