Avast 4.8 Home
WinXP SP3
Online Armor Firewall
Spybot S&D
I posted this problem last summer, resolved it through help I received on this forum, but it is now back.
Problem:
Computer won’t restart after updating the Avast Program files.
– The upgrade appears to proceed normally and no error messages are displayed.
– On reboot attempts there is no error message or blue screen displayed, it just hangs – my desktop background appears but no start menu, taskbar or screen icons.
In the Past:
It appeared there was a problem between AVAST! and Online Armor and I found two workarounds – either:
– Place Online Armor in Learning mode during the reinstall, or
– Uninstall AVAST! in safe mode and do a clean reinstall of AVAST!
Now:
Neither workaround helps – there is no restart at all when AVAST! and Online Armor are both installed. I have had to uninstall Online Armor completely and am now running Windows XP’s firewall
Any suggestions appreciated, including suggestions for an alternative firewall.
I’m far from expert, so can’t help with the problem, but I can suggest a decent free firewall–PC Tools Firewall Plus http://www.pctools.com/firewall/
A number of forum members use this firewall; I have it installed on my laptop (WinXP SP3) along with Spybot S&D, avast 4.8 home, and Spyware Terminator v 2.3.0.507 (without AV & toolbar).
(edit: I just noticed I don’t have the latest version. I think I’ll update. )
Thanks, tls, I took your advice and the PC Tools firewall is up and running fine. I hate to abandon Online Armor, as I liked it quite well, but I couldn’t make it work with AVAST!.
Regards,
Mike C
Mike, I have Online Armour Also and had the same problem as you. I ended up uninstalling Online Armour and reinstalling. At boot up it hung just as you described but after a long time (Approx 20 minutes or so) it booted up. I then put online Armour in the learning mode for the next reboot and everything has been ok since. I think I ended up with with this problem because I forgot to put OA in learning mode when I did the program update for
Avast. In the past when I did so I did not encounter this problem.
One thing to keep in mind is the run safer mode feature that Online Armour has. This is a valuable feature in my opinion.
To me it would seem crazy to have to put OA into learning mode for an avast update as that should also impact other programs that are updated.
To me the real issue is OA bl**dy mindedness to just block, with not so much as a by your leave to inform the user it has just blocked something, is it OK, like many other firewalls. Rather than block and leave the user totally in the dark that OA has blocked an essential program, now the user is blaming avast for update problems rather than the true villain the OA firewall.
I also don’t know why this doesn’t seem to effect all OA users with avast, so the only thing I can think of is a change in the user modes/sensitivity settings in OA. Or the default settings take decisions away from the user, block but don’t notify, often called novice mode in some firewalls.
I have never used OA, so I can’t speak from personal experience, I just see some of the debris in the forums relating to OA and avast.
The problem only seems to occur on Program updates and not iAVS updates. In that program updates are not that frequent, it is a simple matter to set program updates to “ask”, put OA in the learning mode, down load the update, and return OA to normal, in order to use this excellent firewall. At least that is until Avast comes out with theirs. But to each his own.
I experienced a similar problem with the version I installed this morning. I am using Windows XP sp3 and using zonalarm as the firewall. My computer is now totally unresponsive, but shows the desktop wallpaper and the toolbar. However, whenever the cursor is on the the toolbar, it shows only the hourglass and cannot respond to anything. All this happened after I logged on to the system with my userid and password.
I am lost. This message is being sent from another computer.
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