My daily backups blow up during the shadow copy phase in Windows 7. If I turn off Avast, they work great. I was going to CRON-style disable Avast, but i realize even if i could figure that out, it’s not fully automated since there is the dialog prompt to allow disabling. What do I do?
Windows 7 Backup? Or other 3rd party tool?
What do you mean with blow up? Any error message?
Using the native Windows 7 backup utility. I have it set for 3pm every day, but it just dies during the shadow copy phase. It will sit there for about 20 minutes, largely locking up the PC and then finally fails. The event log fills with messages about too much disk activity…
If there isn’t any error, just crash, it’s strange and difficult to troubleshoot.
I have my backup set and it works all the time with avast.
I only have my backup set for once per week on Tuesdays at 8:00am and it has never failed for me.
I’m glad it works for you guys, but it definitely doesn’t for me.
I don’t think it’s a particular failing of Avast! per se, more like some SATA overload - but it only occurs with backup + shadow copy + avast. I think there’s a strong argument that says I might have to troubleshoot the SATA bus drivers etc. but in the meantime, I think it’s a reasonable request to see if Avast! can be shut off during backups - even if you didn’t have my issues, it would be a performance concern.
If I manage to shut off Avast! during the flailing backup, things suddenly snap to and work great. Computer is pretty locked during that process so it can be trying…
I run a daily image backup. I have had what appears to be the same problem you are having.
Unfortunately I don’t recall how I fixed it but as I recall the problem didn’t have anything to do with avast! software. I had as I recall a corrupt or invalid path in my backup or something like that. Sorry, I can’t be of more help 
I have W7 now but to be honest I haven’t even tried or even set up the backup deal. I certainly would not schedule it on a regular basis of any kind.
I use the win7 backup system at least every 2 weeks just to have a backup for that more or less not so reliable ATIH 2011.
avast! so far did not give me any trouble at all during win7 backup or restore and this is true for any released or beta version. Also during the backup I can continue working with “MS Office 2007” without even recognising the parallel running backup.
Shadow copies or system restores are working perfectly together with avast!
So from my experience I could not blame avast! for doing any bad to the system.
So every day my computer is still “locking up” at the scheduled backup time. Surely there is someone clever enough to help me fix this?
I can concede it’s not Avast’s! “fault” per se, but I have no idea how to go about looking for the problem - very sad camper
I do a manual image every other day without any problems. I do not automate anything.
Unfortunately I’m not the one clever enough to help you fix it, I’m none to familiar with win7. But for me on my win7 netbook I have a weekly scheduled shadow copy/image and data backup and that works OK, so no interference from avast on that system.
@Malachi,
I can’t give you a solution, but maybe you can think of the difference between your system and the others saying it works for them?
If you think it is Avast causing the problem (which is still a possibility, why not), then maybe, just for testing and not as a recommendation, you could try excluding the relevant folders from Avast?
Exclude the destination folder of your backups (and, if you can, the source folder too) in every shield of Avast AND in the settings → exclusions list. (I’m not recommending this as a permanent exclusion, but only for help you test the issue.)
Also, how much free space you have, both in your source partition and in you destination volume? This is usually a problem affecting backups.
How much disk space you are backing up, and how much do you have reserved for VSS?
Any other resident program (other than Avast)? Also, older security tools that you used to use that might have leaved remnants might need you to run their respective clean removal utilities from Windows Safe Mode.
You could check that, at the time you have scheduled the backup to run, there are no other processes intensively using resources (like a schedule Avast’s scan, or Windows Update, or scandisks/checkdisks, or…).
Those questions might help you find the difference between your system and others, and why in your case it doesn’t work.
In addition, you could try updating Avast to the latest beta, which has some bug fixes too.