Windows 2000 problem ?

About 8 -14 weeks ago i had my free Avast version update the program itself. After installlation, i encountered several problems.

  • Could not connect to the internet with IE6
  • Dreamweaver MX became disfunctional
  • Several other programs were disfunctional.

I did uninstall Avast all together and the problems were gone.

I downloaded the latest version from this site, and the problem was back again. Uninstalling again solved the problem again.

I installed an old version (filesize 18250 kb) and disabled the auto-update function for the program which solves the problem kinda. The virus database update is running normally without problems.

I know 2 other computers that also run Win2000 that have the exact same problem, after a certain point when a new update for the program was created, the computers are pretty much disfunctional, unless i go back to a previous version(or removal all together).

Al three systems run Win2000 Dutch version as well as the Dutch version from Avast for home(free version).

I kinda suspect that afer a version update a while back something was build in that causes conflics with Win2000, other than info above i dont have any logs. From the looks of it the programs just keep hanging without any errors.
.
.
.

HI
Did you run the avast uninstall tool during your update process?
ever had any other antivirus installed or pre installed?
which ones?
you can also try the Antivir registry cleaner (run it after running the avast tool- also called the “small fix”

I run W2K on several machines and run BlackVipers “safe” setup

Did you run the avast uninstall tool during your update process?

No, its just the program asking to install a new version (green screen), and have it do its job.

And i did the run the uninstall through software removal, and that seemed to work as a charm(and solved the problems…)

ever had any other antivirus installed or pre installed? which ones?

No never had any other viruscanner installed.

you can also try the Antivir registry cleaner (run it after running the avast tool- also called the "small fix"

Aftert the problem occured a couple a months ago, i uninstalled Avast, which solved the problem, but it ment, i was running my system without anti virus. Recently i re-installed my computer from scratch(after format C) and thought maybe Avast had discovered the problem in the meantime, so i downloaded the latest (Dutch) version but the problem re-occured inmediatelly.

I uninstalled the program and removed all entries from the registry by hand. After that i installed the older version i still had, and disabled the program update. And so far this works, except its an older version…

About a week ago i went to my parents who have two Win2000 systems. While being there my mom told me she couldnt access the net anymore, and i suspected that Avast was updated and therefore causing problems. Same thing there, i removed the program and all problems were gone(still have to install the older version there).

My dads computer was unaffected, simply because the computer didnt had the update installed yet(parents hadnt be home for aprox 8 weeks).

From my point of view, Avast did build something in that causes the problems. Its just a real pitty i dont recall exactly what date i got the problematic update for the first time :-[ Not to mention i should have turned to Avast inmediatelly and not wait that long…

Than again, i had alot of bad s**t on my mind last months…
.
.
.

After a clean install…
Win2K
What else loads at start up?
MOD?

anyway
slim your systems down with BlackVipers Safe recommendations and hopeully Avast gets sorted out
did you say how much memory you have?

Which firewall do you use?
Which other security programs do you have installed?

On startup follow programs wil run:

Yahoo Version 6,0,0,1643
ZoneAlarm version 2.6.362 (yes old, but for various reasons i like to run this specific model)
PnkBstrA.exe (Punkbuster anti cheat for games)
PnkBstrB.exe (Punkbuster anti cheat for games)
Avast itself.

And thats pretty much it, except of course the normal things that Win2000 has running in the background.

Due to the high end nature of my work i always keep my system in mint condition, each 3 months or even 2 months i re-install the system from scratch to make sure it runs 100%. System is always being installed trough a very, very rigid installation procedure.

After Win2000 is intalled the first thing being done is to move the swapfiles to another drive(to prevent any form of fragmentation). After that all the programs are installed through a written down procedure that is followed by the letter.

Physical C drive contains Win2000
Physical D drive contains Win2000 swapfile (TEMP)
Physical E drive contains Photoshop Swapfiles
Physical F through P contain all data (worth aprox 5 to 10 million dollars) that is being stored.

System is a 3 GHz pentium 4
Memory 4 times 500Mb (2 pairs) in total 2 Gigabyte
256 Mb videocard in an AGP slot.

All together its a super clean system, and no c##p should be running in the background unnoticed really.

And i completelly forgot that, but i have a second system that stores an entire backup from the mainsystem. Its a total different system having a dual pentium motherboard (as in 2 physical CPU’s) as well as 2 Gigabyte of memory and that system too has the same problem. Which means i know 4 (not 3) totally different systems that have the same problem with Avast. My moms computer was installed by my niece and brother, which means its a total different installation. Meaning, i cant be the problem :slight_smile:

The only comminality is that all systems run Dutch Win2000 and encounter the same problem with the Dutch Avast latest versions.

No, as far as i can see the problem is with Avast (Dutch problem ?) combined with Win2000 (Dutch problem ?) and not the systems on itself.

The thing i could do on my end is, to uninstall Avast again, and see if the English version will behave differently and see if shutting down Yahoo, ZoneAlarm, PunkBuster can make the difference. Though i doubt it since those programs always have been running without any problems.
.
.
.

I think these two could be related. I suggest deleting the entries of avast into ZA settings, boot, try again allowing the connection (specially ashWebSv.exe).

I’ll read and think about the other issues…

My moms computer was installed by my niece and brother, which means its a total different installation.

Should have been My dads computer was installed by my brother and my moms computer was installed by my niece and brother, which means those are total different installations.

Anf for own systems also applies that the registries are as clean as possibly can. Sheer theoretically, depending on the program(s) involved an uninstall from a program can mean re-install the entire system if i dont like the result !
.
.
.

I think these two could be related. I suggest deleting the entries of avast into ZA settings, boot, try again allowing the connection (specially ashWebSv.exe).

That version of ZoneAlarm is a pretty straight forward program, and it always nicelly asks for each Avast tasks like -Avast Antivirus Service, -Avast Anti Virus Update, -Avast E-mail Scanner service and -Avast Web Scanner to allow Internet access and/or server rights after the program is updated. And new entries are added of course. And normally i clean out ZoneAlarm from all Entries regarding Avast, just to prevent a long list of all kinda (the same and double) entries. Than i simply start everything like IE6, Outlook, etc. so it will ask permissions for everything, which ill grant.

For the record there is no later version than IE6 available for Win2000 if i am correct (if so bad thing really lol).

But dont forget, it also affects Macromedia MX studio, if i recall correct the program starts and keeps starting, endlessly… Lol, it just wont stop starting. And no, i dont have MX linked to the web at all. Its blocked in ZoneAlarm and doesnt have internet rights. Uploading of the files goes seperatelly through a seperate FTP program.

As said i will try all options at my hand but i suspect its an actual bug in the current (Dutch ?) Avast version.

Just in case you guys wanna have a look at it, this is a screenshot of my current taskmanager:

http://www.unrealtexture.com/Media/Pictures/TaskManager.jpg

.
.
.

What I can say is that language dependent bugs are very rare in avast, i.e., all avast version are generally affected by bugs and not only a specific language.

I did run a test to make sure all i said was accurate.

I just run the updater for the Avast program to update to the latest version, to see what the results were, and than install the English version to see if theres a difference. I forgot i already did that test and i already had the English version installed. Which still means my parents have the Dutch version installed.

What I can say is that language dependent bugs are very rare in avast, i.e., all avast version are generally affected by bugs and not only a specific language.

Yep, and what i wrote above the language doesn’t make any difference, unless its a conflict with the Dutch version of Win2000.

Follow things did happen:

  • I did run the update to the latest version.

  • Rebooted the computer after installation.

  • ZoneAlarm did not ask any permission for Avast, so no new entries were created…

  • I removed all Avast entries and rebooted again.

  • After reboot i started IE6 and Outlook, but no permissions for Avast were asked by ZoneAlarm. Which means no entries were added, and no internet access was allowed. Neither programs could connect to the net.

  • Yahoo, who already has an entry in ZoneAlarm and doesn’t need any change, was unable to connect to the net.

  • WFS_FTP_Pro (FTP program) was unable to connect to any of my sites(same thing there, it already has an entry in ZoneAlarm and shouldn’t need a new entry), no remarks or logs were made.

  • Couldn’t find any problem with MX Studio that fast.?

If i shut down ZoneAlarm than everything again works as a charm. This to me suggests that the current version of Avast must have a conflict with my current version of ZoneAlarm. And just theorizing, for some reason it doesn’t trigger ZoneAlarm to make an entry, not even when all entries are removed.

And i assume, because Avast doesn’t have any rights, it blocks all programs that connect to the net or otherwise. Though different than what i thought previous, it does create a conflict that wasn’t there before. I now suspect that its either still a bug in Avast, or they stopped supporting that older version of ZoneAlarm.

Which effectively is oné of the reasons i DO use that old version. Older versions like mine are simply not supported by the last generations of viruses :P, which makes it oné of the safest firewalls. The older the better. The other reason is, i used to collect viruses, malware, hackware, etc. for fun, but also to show people, mostly elderly people, what to do if a virus is hitting their computer by sending them a mail with a virus, having them go to a specific webpage with a myself choosen virus and trowing an infected floppy in their drive, all under my guidance of course. In reality this is the best way to learn people how to deal with such things, instead of just telling what to do, i can hit them endlessly with viruses till they know exactly what to do, and most important as well, not to panic :slight_smile:

How does that apply to an old version, simple, though Avast is a good virusprogram, it cannot block any virus you pick up on the net, and the oné thing that this old version ZA does is, “block the net” and it does that in 1/1000 of a NewYork second, unlike the later versions where it takes almost 30 sec lmao.

But to get back on the story, oné of my neighbours accidentally also has the same version of Avast and ZA, but he uses the Dutch XP. Ill pay him a visit tomorrow or so, and see if he has problems with an updated Avast, cause that would be interesting to know.

But for now, it seems to be a conflict between Avast current version and my older ZoneAlarm in combination with Win2000.
.
.
.

Why don’t you upgrade ZA to the latest?
Or, at least, uninstall and install it again?

I’m using ZA 6.1 successfully with W2k and avast

Why don't you upgrade ZA to the latest?
I'm using ZA 6.1 successfully with W2k and avast

As i said, i concider ZoneAlarm 2.6.362 as a much safer version than any version above, last 5 years i have been testing this ZoneAlarm to a newer version(forgot which version though, but if correct it was a late version 4 or even 6)

And you have to remember that after version 3 the TrueVector underwent a big change and the entire code was rewritten. The thing i immediately dislike was the fact that pressing the STOP button to block all internet access immediately, went from 0 seconds to something like 30 seconds. In other words the program has become bulky…

The other just as important thing, when testing the firewall against viruses that are capable tearing down antivirus like Avast and firewalls like ZA, than the oné thing sticks out. In the past there weren’t to many viruses capable of doing that, not too mention most viruses were written for fun and nothing else. Nowadays viruses viruses are much more serious and most of them are either looking to use you system as base for a larger attack, but most of them are written to capture serials, logins, passwords etc, etc.

I suspect that 95% of nowadays viruses try do the last, and its simple, they always try write in the code for the most used anti virus and firewalls. When i tested this in the past i noticed that newer firewalls were easily being pulled down, while my crappy old firewall couldn’t. Simply because it wasn’t build into the virus anymore, who used that old version lol.

I am a texture artist (www.unrealtexture.com) and i see the same thing happen in games, new bots created for cheats can often pass new protection, while crappy old protection simply block them lmao…

For Firewalls and Antiviruses go:

The older, the unlikely counter measures are built into the virus.
The more unknown, the unlikely counter measures are built into the virus.

Therefore very know Firewalls/Anti virus(like Norton, Macaffee) are more at danger than an unknown virus scanner which is new on the market.

For Firewalls and Antiviruses also goes:

The newer and less used Anti virus and Firewalls are super safe because those haven’t been build into the viruses yet.

But apart from the story above, Avast always worked flawless, and all of a sudden it doesn’t, and the cause is not ZoneAlarm but Avast ! And either they made a mistake, or they stopped supporting the older ZA vector, and if so, they exactly proof my point, because virusbuilders do the same !!!

Or, at least, uninstall and install it again?

That is something i can try, and i will do that :slight_smile: , to see if it can make a difference, but even if that works, i still think that Avast should concider this a bugreport, and should take measures. I actually know dozends of people doing the same thing as i do, use older stuff because those are getting safer and safer by the day…

For me it remains, its a problem caused by Avast…

PS Don’t get me wrong, otherwise i think Avast is a damn good anti virus 8), and i always point, and will point people to this program, and advise to use it for a year, and if the key expires, go buy it.
.
.
.

Awkward moment to post my site lol, since they always run backups at this moment(saturday), which makes the site often unavailable for 2-3 hours ::slight_smile:

Than again they need to backup 200 gig…

Screenshot and site might not be available withing 3 hours on this post.
.
.
.