Yesterday I attempted to boot up but had problems with Avast v8 claiming the webshield was not up. The little orange ball in the systray was not its usual rotating self, but apparently was indicating not all was well with Avast (looked like it had a beard or somesuch). I’d look at the UI, and it said it was connected to the internet on the reputation/streaming updates screen, where in fact my DSL modem was not turned on. When I turned the modem on, it would still say it was connected, but there were no bytes coming over the modem through the ethernet. I hit the button to turn on all the shields, and nothing happened. Under the maintenance tab, I hit the “Update engine and virus definitions” button to try to set the virus db correct, and it would just sit there and spin, nothing coming from the internet. On occasion, I could boot up and get a happy spinning orange ball, but then I would try to bring up the taskmgr, would get some disk crunching and then my taskbar would become hosed. I lost yesterday to this problem, as well as a couple of hours a few weeks ago. Then, as well as yesterday, I would come in later, like this morning, and everything booted up fine.
I have looked at other threads such as this, some implicating ZoneAlarm Pro firewall, which I have, but I doubt that’s the problem here. I frankly suspect a corruption in the virus db bits streamed down (they all have to chain together correctly, no?) or some other db that has a time element. I had a BSOD the day before this happened yesterday, but I don’t believe that happened the first time. I occasionally (every month or two or more) get a blue screen due to an IRQ issue somewhere in the os, but I haven’t chased it yet and don’t really plan to (I’ll be moving on before much longer).
Could anyone give me a clue as to how to unstick things so I can function again when this happens? I was all set for a major battle today, perhaps moving back to v7. But I’d really rather stick with v8, which aside from the one outstanding issue I have of not being able to scan my harddrives as a group, is working rather well.
This did the trick when Avast came up somewhat hosed this morning. The ball was spinning freely, but it had a death hold on my task bar. I could click to get the taskmgr running, but then I’d get some disk grinding and things would fade out. So after a few rounds of that, I went over to the administrator login (I could probably do this on my own power user login, but I felt it better to do as admin), did the repair, rebooted, and I’ve been good to go.
Thank you Asyn, you saved me
I wonder if this should be made into a permanent topic at the top of the forum. I mean, I’ve seen mention of repair before, but it didn’t occur to me to try it for this problem.
Ran into the other half of the problem this morning >:(
If the ball is in “bearded” mode, I could not get the repair started. In Add/Remove programs, when I clicked Change/Remove it hung without bringing up the avast panel.
It took me about 10-15 reboots and a bit of a battle to get around this problem. The trick appears to be to right click on the ball, permanently turn off all shields, attempt to reboot, log in as administrator.
Then once rebooted you can do the repair. I did another reboot then, just to be safe.
Turn all shields back on. Rebooted again to be safe.
Logged in as my regular user, and everything is hunky-dory
So the million-$ question is now why I am I having to do this whole repair song and dance every few days. Now that I know what to do, I can do it fairly quickly, but it still begs the ?. I think each time is after a long heavy session on the internet the previous day. But the software should be able to maintain better control and not become corrupted or whatever.
Asyn ?s: Free, v8.0.1483 (I understand there is a newer version, but I don’t know if it’s worthwhile to upgrade), ZAPro firewall v5.5, only Avast on this particular os starting with v3 or 4 (I forget).
user_1000: I tried this (and it is still checked) this setting of loading after other system services. Didn’t make any difference. BUT, thanks for the suggestion!
Here’s the way I can always (so far) get around the hanging and webshield down-ness. It’s a bit kludgy, but it works so far. I’ll turn off all the shields (with the right click on the ball) before I shut down. I shut the shields down permanently. When I get booted back up, I have to turn them back on with the same little shields menu. That hasn’t failed yet. When I had the machine lock up earlier this evening, of course I did not have the opportunity to turn them off before reboot. When I came back up, the ball was bearded. So I turned off the shields, rebooted, and turned the shields back on.
I don’t think the repair approach solves this anymore. One time I repaired, rebooted, and I think it came up with the bearded ball; no internet exposure occurred as the DSL modem was off. I think there is some conflict going on that prevents the webshield coming up or locking up the window manager in some fashion (locked up taskbar or other buttons, or they become locked up after one or two clicks).
Returning to this. It has been a busy couple of months, and I never had time to do the uninstall. Instead, when I encounter a bearded orange ball (usually the problem) or a locked-up taskbar (don’t think I’ve had this problem in quite some time), I’ve learned to just turn off all shields permanently and reboot, then restart all the shields at the X’d-out orange ball. This seems to work quite well. And I only have to do it say maybe one in ten boots. I think the next time there is a big update to avast, where a whole update comes down, I’ll do the uninstall/install procedure to start fresh, but for now I’m just going to leave it.
I like your fish swimming in the fish bowl, asyn.
Thanks for your folks’ help. I’ll try to mark this topic closed.
This did the trick when Avast came up somewhat hosed this morning. The ball was spinning freely, but it had a death hold on my task bar. I could click to get the taskmgr running, but then I’d get some disk grinding and things would fade out. So after a few rounds of that, I went over to the administrator login (I could probably do this on my own power user login, but I felt it better to do as admin), did the repair, rebooted, and I’ve been good to go.