Installed Avast recently as it really is the best Antivirus scanner in terms of speed and low system resources at the moment. Very nice work on the cache system. Well done to the team!
I registered to post some vital info for those using Creative soundcards and sound drivers the same or older than 2.18.0013.
When installing Avast on one of my PC’s with a X-Fi card, the machine would start hanging on shutdown by about two minutes. Uninstalled Avast and the hang went away.
I was scratching my head for ages, as Avast worked perfectly fine on my other PC. Uninstalled Comodo Firewall, installed Avast without most the Shields (except File Shield), tried removing Catalyst Control Centre and other software, but still got the shutdown hang.
Finally disabled my soundcard and the shutdown hang went away. Creative once again and their crappy drivers. Anyway, checked their website and very recently, Feb 2011, they have released version 2.18.0015 of their drivers for XP (this version has been out for 7 for a while now):
In the details, it lists:
Resolves the following issues:
* System taking more than two minutes to shut down.
* PowerDVD® DX 8.3 (Dell® version) not working properly.
* Passthrough of Dolby®/DTS® audio to an external decoder not working with Windows Media Player 12.
So their you have it. Updated to these drivers and no more shutdown hang when Avast is installed. I realize this won’t be everyone’s issue, but it’s worth posting to save a few the effort of trouble shooting as creative cards and XP are quite popular.