system hanging

I like Avast and with your help have the answers to my other questions. I was testing the Pro version and if I can get over this problem, I’ll purchase Avast. So now I have a new problem I need help with.

Every couple days since I installed Avast, my system hangs. Doesn’t seem to matter if I was using it at the time or not. The mouse works and keyboard works until I try to DO anything. For example to open another program or window in IE. I get the endless hourglass. Can’t get task manager and there is no LAN traffic. I’m not saying it’s Avast itself, but there is some conflict or something with it installed. This system used to be very stable and could stay up running for weeks.

I’m using XP Pro. Looking at the event log if the system was “idle”, it seems like NOTHING happens until I reset the system. There will be a hole of hours without anything written to the event log, not even the marker. I do run folding@home and have for a year on this machine, so the system isn’t really idle. It looks like my folding hangs too.

I uninstalled Avast to see if it hangs again within in the next couple days. If it does hang, I’ll start looking at hardware. If not, what can I look at with Avast reinstalled?

do you have ANY other antivirus software installed that would be a conlfict that could behave like this

No other anti virus installed. I was using PC-cillin until their 2004 version which seems to fight with my firewall (sygate). I’ve tried several others, but all were uninstalled. KAV, Panda, BitDefender. I can’t see any processes running that belonged to any of them.

I uninstalled Avast to see if it hangs again within in the next couple days.

has it froze agian yet?

beck, first of all, we are here to try to help you… Wellcome.
After avast! removal, does the system work properly?

You said you desinstall other antivirus previously… Did you clean the Registry or run specific applications to remove traces of these av?

Do you still use Sygate Personal Firewall?

What version of avast! are you using?
For me, avast! works nice and smooth in XP Pro :wink:

yes wellcome to the forum!
And Thank You technical for the help :smiley:

beck,

My counterparts have brought up a valid point. You MUST make sure that all traces in the registry of prior av installs have been removed. We have found that the jv16 tool package (ver1.3) works nice for this, or the older RegClean.
If you have some similar registry tool, then go ahead and clean up the registry before proceeding.

Lets look at a few things. Firstly, if your system is not hanging, let us know so we do not continue the thread.

If it still is hanging, I want you to shut down the On access Protection modules and try again.

If it still hangs, then I want you to look at your system resources in GDI and System. If they are approaching 60% or are less, then you could be suffering from loss of available resources. I have worked with users of Avast who have had trouble in this area. Avast seemed to be the cause, but was only the “trigger”. Taking out some non-essential programs in the startup took care of it. But anyway, we need to troubleshoot this one first. Ok?

Windows XP and Avast Pro get along very well, and usually when a “hang” occurs, we need to look at a software conflict.

If the above did not resolve the problem, then open up the Windows Event viewer (through Control Panel/Administative icon) and see if you notice any error listed under System or Application log that might lead us to a cause. Under the System log, a hang will be clearly marked with a red X and the word ERROR. Double clicking the entry will open up the info box.

Still no luck with that, then I would like you to shut down all non-essential programs using MSCONFIG/Startup.
Leave Avast services running! Normally Systray and Explorer must also stay running.

Let me know if you obtain any results with the above steps. IF you need more detailed instructions, get back to me via IM, or right here.

techie

yes if its fixed let us know im looking at at least 10 threads phew…

The system hasn’t hung since I uninstalled Avast Friday night. But it hasn’t been 2 days yet either. If I still have no problem by Monday, then I will assume it’s something that involves a conflict with Avast installed, and I would like to track it down and fix it. I’ll clean the registry when I feel comfortable that the system is not going to hang. I don’t want to remove something that is wrong and not have it hang without Avast either. I have Panda installed right now.

The only red X’s I have in the event logs are from booting to safe mode last week. I do have one red X from yesterday about who was going to be the master browser and a vote must have resolved that. Before that I haven’t had one since 11/16/03 when I was trying PC-cillin 2004 because my subscription for 2003 ran out.

As for startup, I have “normal” system stuff, sygate, APC monitor and anti-virus. I manually start folding@home and EMIII to monitor all the folding systems. I usually have Solitaire running. Otherwise it’s normal starting and stopping programs. I don’t have billions of “junk” things starting with the system because I hate that.

I can monitor resources once in a while. But not when I have the actual problem because I can’t get into anything. So, how do I look at GDI and system? I know how to open and look at the performance monitor, but not what to add into the graph thing. If it was minimized when the problem happens, I can’t restore it to see it either I don’t believe. Tell me what to get and/or run and I will.

For cleaning the registry, do I search for Trend, KAV, Panda, Bit Defender and remove all entries for them? If I kill my system, will someone help me fix it? ;D

Thank you all for your help! :slight_smile:

There are some links for system monitoring here. Anyway, I do not find yet a very good application to do it in a simple manner (not with tons of numbers and uninteligible information for common users).

I’m quite sure your system is hanging because a previous av installation… Anyway I suggest you a full backup (maybe in CD-RW or another HDD partition). You can see some links for that here.

I can only ‘pray’ if your system dies ;D

beck, an important question is ‘Have you had the latest version of avast (4.1.304)?’. The prior versions featured a pesky memory leak that could be causing the problems you were describing… So when doing additional tests, always use the latest version (at this time this would be 4.1.304).

Thanks
Vlk

Ok, cleaned the registry and my system seems to still work. Reinstalled Avast and have 4.1.304 version. It did a much nicer job installing this time. Did all my email accounts by itself. I’ll wait until Thursday and if no hanging, I’ll say it’s cured. :slight_smile:

Quite happy with you… :wink:
Let us know if everything is ok in next days. So, another one comprovation: more than one antivirus could cause deep system troubles 8)

:-[
Ok, it was in the “hang” state about 60 minutes ago. It had updated the anti-virus database about 30 minutes before that.

I noticed the hang because I was typing a URL and it didn’t type. I right clicked on Avast in the systray and clicked Stop On-Access protection and Exit. Avast stopped the processes after a bit of time. Everything was free again and running smoothly. I went into the On-Access protection control and started the providers. Except the Outlook/Exchange provider says the provider is waiting for a subsystem to start. What is that? Why?

Anyway, I had performance monitor log job running in the background. I didn’t know what to put in it, so I left cpu, disk que, and pagefile. Pagefile and disk que were pegged. I have a .jpg of it, but don’t know if it will post.

Is any of this helpful? If you want me to run the monitor again, what do you want in it?

The things running were:
Solitaire, KoalaTerm (telnet), IE, Performance monitor job, EMIII, Sygate, APC, and whatever is normal in a system.

No red X’s either.

Ehm, am I reading the screenshot correctly that you were (/are?) having a steady 90% CPU usage? Yikes!

Any idea which process is taking up the cycles? Even the Task Manager could tell you this thing… Startin the performance monitor is generally a good idea but you have to know what you’re looking for. If you’re shooting to the dark, the standard Task Manager can usually supply you with more data, in a more readable form…

Thanks,
Vlk

Sure. I run folding@home, so the CPU is always busy. Set to 90% of idle cycles. I’ve been running it for over a year on this system without problems.

When it goes into the hang, I can’t bring up task manager or any other program even if it’s minimized, nor can I start a program.

Vlk, I know this not concern to avast, but anybody can explain to me - and anybody else who does not understand anything about this - what are the meaning of the Task Manager monitor itens: peaks, bytes I/O, virtual memory, and so on… there are a lot of columns and we don´t know what do we have to monitor… Thanks if you can do anything. :wink:

This is a common problem of all our system… Not Windows events nor Performance monitor can be easily configurated to ‘save’ and ‘show’ the correct information…
Pooltag is an application that does not have a friendly appearance…
Does anybody know, I mean, really know and application or Window setting to correct this? I’m tired of graphics and tables full of numbers and not an understandable thing for current Windows users >:(