Windows 8 and Office 2013 hangs when saving to network folder

Affected Product: Endpoint Protection with only File System Shield active

When trying to save an Office 2013 document (Word, Excel, …) on a network share the process (WINWORD.EXE, EXCEL.EXE) is running on full CPU load. Saving cannot be canceled (reads “unresponsive” in the Task Manager) and trying to kill the task via taskkill results in a “Access denied”. Both avast processes are idle. Access to the network drive itself by using Windows Explorer is fully blocked since it also becomes unresponsive.
Only solution is to either deactivate the network adapter in the control panel or pull the network cable from the outlet.

We already added the drive letters to the list of excluded locations and also added \* and C:\Windows\CSC*

The behaviour occurs only if the user account is a domain administrator. Offline Files enabled or disabled has not influence.

Saving other non-Office related documents (TXT, PDF) on the network share also works.

We also use folder redirection for our user profiles which are running on the same server as the above network shares.
Saving an office document to the Desktop (which is hosted on the server) works.

We tried version 7.0.1455 and 8.0.1486 via EAP.

The issue does not occur on the following combinations (different systems):

Default Domain User + Windows 7 + Office 2010
Default Domain User + Windows 7 + Office 2013
Default Domain User + Windows 8 + Office 2010
Default Domain User + Windows 8 + Office 2013
Domain Administrator + Windows 7 + Office 2010
Domain Administrator + Windows 7 + Office 2013

Network share is hosted on a Windows Server 2012 server.

If we remove Endpoint Protection from a Windows 8 and Office 2013 system the issue is gone.

We checked the Trust Center settings and the Add-ins and even started Excel or Word in safe mode - both with the same result: Saving hangs.

Any ideas?

Interesting - I have the same issue, but chalked it up to Windows 8 and Server 2012 - never thought it was an Avast issue, as other user with Windows 7 didn’t have the same problem. However I am a domain admin, and all my users are not - so it makes sense.