Vista has a long history of problems with AV programs, and it appears Avast is the latest victim.
After this morning’s automatic update, my computer hung up. I manually restarted it, but after about 5 minutes it hung again. This is the problem I was having:
The symptom is that the system gradually hangs up, with the disk activity light continuously on. If you press , after about a minute an error dialog appears with this title:
“Login process has failed to create the security options dialog.” and dialog message “Failure - Security Options”.
My solution was to boot to Safe Mode and uninstall Avast. This has apparently cured the problem, with no hangs in the 1.5 hours since I uninstalled.
Obviously having no AV program isn’t an option, so I’ll reinstall Avast without the latest update.
I’m running a Dell Inspiron 1525, Vista with all updates (but not SP1), Avast setup file version 4.8.1201.0 and today’s update.
Two days ago I had problems booting Vista… tried twice… the logon screen does not appear.
I’ve choosed ‘Last known good’ configuration and now seems ok.
Which firewall do you use?
Can you check your Windows Update history to see which were the latest updates that could, eventually, bring some trouble to avast?
Did you have any other antivirus is this computer in the past?
I reinstalled Vista from the Dell factory image partition two days ago, then applied all available Vista updates, except one (KB943899) that causes problems on Dell PCs. So the installation is very new and fairly clean.
The factory image included McAfee, which I uninstalled using McAfee’s uninstall tool.
I’m running the current version of Zone Alarm.
After posting, I reinstalled Avast, but did not see a way to prevent it from updating. The system hung again within a few minutes. I’ve now uninstalled it again.
Sometimes, McAfee won’t be completely removed if, before, you do not uninstall Avast, including the use of its “Uninstall Application” if necessary (www.avast.com/eng/faq-install-uninstall-avast.html).
Yes, I used McAfee’s tool to uninstall all McAfee applications.
Thanks for the Avast uninstall tool. I happened to find it after posting, and I’ve just run it from Safe Mode.
However, after rebooting, my system has the original error again - continuous disk activity and the error message. That’s very strange, since removing Avast the first time solved the problem. Apparently removing it the second time didn’t solve it.
I have to say that Vista has been a nightmare for me. I’ve got over 20 years experience as an IT manager and network administrator, and have never had this many problems with any other version of Windows. I’ve had more problems with Vista in the three months I’ve had this machine, than I’ve had with XP since it was released. Much as I hate to move backwards, I’m starting to lean towards installing XP Pro.
Sorry for the intrusion, but I had a similar situation due to ZoneAlarm.
The current version of ZA is bloated with its’ own anti-virus and anti-spyware.
Are you certain that you just have the firewall? ZA became so conflicted for me that I ended
up removing it and all its’ components, then I found just a lite firewall and installed it.
Seemed to cure my troubles. There were no more conflicts. This is just my experience but
it may be worth checking.
Yes, I used Control Panel first, then the Avast tool you pointed me to.
Because the problem would not go away (whether caused by Avast or not), yesterday I once again did a clean factory partition reinstall (the second one this week >:(), then loaded all the Vista updates including SP1. I’m going to load Zone Alarm and Avast, then let the system run for several days to see if the problem recurs.
A search of Dell’s or MS’s support shows that nearly every AV or firewall vendor has some history of problems with Vista, so it’s hard to pin down what causes a problem. Avast is my prime suspect because the problem occurred after the usual daily update, and disappeared after the first uninstall. But Vista has so many problems that I could easily be wrong!
PapaSmurf:
Yes, I’m definitely using the free firewall-only version… although Zone Labs is making it more and more difficult and confusing to do that.
I have Vista Ultimate SP1 and installed Avast two weeks ago after removing AVG. My firewall is Vista’s. I installed Avast without the mail options. I have had no problems at all including the automatic updates. I even just rebooted and there was no problem.
The only caveat was that it did take about an hour to build manually the VRDB.
The last years the problem was always with bad driver function of ZoneAlarm.
They have acknowledge once but not all the times.
If you uninstall ZoneAlarm you will see that avast won’t be guilty.
I’ve tried Comodo and PCTools into Vista. Neither of them run smoothly…
I gave up to Windows Vista firewall itself.
I’ve blocked some outbound connections this way:
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Windows Firewall with Advanced Security
While providing complete inbound AND outbound protection, by default, the Vista firewall does not contain any rules for controlling of outbound traffic. That is, every program is allowed to go out.
Interesting. I’d restate this a little more broadly: “Programmers have a long history of thinking they know what they are doing, but usually they can’t, don’t, or won’t test thoroughly to prove it. It appears that Avast programmers fall into this trap also.”
I’ve used Vista Ultimate 32 bit on a laptop for well over a year now. I’m quite happy with the operating system and its performance. It seems to be resilient and resist problems fairly well, where XP would just hang. I suspect I pay a bit of performance penalty compared to XP, but that performance goes into a considerable amount of background monitoring of events and diagnostics that are relatively easy to find and interpret and that I never had with XP. I had a few driver issues early on with external devices, but those manufacturers caught up. The only serious problem I have had is with the Vista built in backup. It worked great for a while then stopped. I gave up on it and purchased a highly rated 3rd party product for $35 to solve that problem. I wish all my problems could be solved for only $35.
I use Avast because I have had poor experience with purchased A/V products. McAfee seems to be indistinguishable from adware, Symantec is prone to crashing the machine, TrendMicro seems to be leaky, Panda duns you with e-mails, etc. I’d pay for reliable, trouble-free A/V software that leaves me alone and does its job, but I haven’t found it. I turned to free A/V software like Avast because it was highly rated and it irked me to pay for trouble with purchased A/V products.
Avast, amazingly, seemed to be both reliable and trouble-free, or at least it did until the 4.8 update. Since then, I have had recurring, intermittent problems. If I turn off Avast, the problems go away. If I turn it on, they recur. Vista has been out for a couple of years, 4.8 has been out for 2 weeks, and it seems pretty clear that the new problems I’ve been having in the past 2 weeks are Avast’s, not Vista’s.
My problems seem to be:
Sometimes, when I start up Outlook the first time after startup, I can’t get Outlook to run normally. If I switch folders, there is an indefinite waiting period of several minutes before loading the folder seems to complete. If I restart, Outlook may or may not (but usually will) run properly. When Outlook runs slowly, if I halt Avast, close Outlook, and restart Outlook, Outlook works fine. If I restart Avast without rebooting, usually Outlook will run slowly again. I have a sense that there is some timing relationship between system start, Avast start, and Outlook start that has to be just right.
Sometimes web pages load very slowly. Sometimes it is certain web pages, sometimes it is every web page. If I stop Avast, then close and restart the browser, any pages that were previously slow will now load quickly. When I restart Avast, things seem to continue to run at the expected speed rather than becoming slow again. It’s taken me a while to learn the trick, but now whenever my browser runs slowly, I turn off Avast.
This is not a criticism of the original post or the author. I used the opening quote because I don’t want the spotlight to be redirected away from Avast (our dear friend) to Vista (a M$ product, therefore bad). I do think there is something that has changed for the worse in 4.8 and needs to be fixed. Everything I see tells me this is a problem with Avast and not with Vista. I like Avast and would like to see them fix the problem.
You have not mentioned doing so - so I have to ask …
To improve the performance on starting Outlook have you tried the simple expedient of turning off the scanning of archived messages on the startup of Outlook (In the Outlook Exchange provider > Customize > General tab)?
Meanwhile, I’ve attached a screen shot of the task manager during my most recent Avast incident. This shows one of about 4 screens full of duplicate web scanner processes.
And I forgot to mention - these multiple copies of this service don’t go away after I stop all providers. They are protected, too, so I can’t kill them manually - understandable, since I wouldn’t want some malware stopping them, but a nuisance when apps go wild.
Update: they did go away when I closed the browser.
