After upgrading to 6.0 my XP system hangs at shutdown.
It’s at there very last stage of the shutdown.
All dialogs are closed and I’m just waiting for the power-off.
Instead nothing happends (left the system on for 12 hours 
Anyone know what could be causing this problem, and how get fix it?
I suggest an installation from scratch:
Isn’t there a display pop-up on shutdown, as there is a delay set in and that should show the stalled program, etc.
If no display - Try and find UHPclean User Hive Profile clean. Basically this Microsoft program (run at startup) closes user hive profiles that haven’t closed, so this may help. However, it doesn’t identify the process as far as I’m aware, you could try checking the windows event viewer for any associated entries.
Relevant link: User Profile Hive Cleanup Service.
What would that change? Apart from beeing a lot of work?
I remember this happening on some other upgade too.
I we have to uninstall and reinstall everytime there is an upgrade, well
To bad I can’t see what process is hanging (can’t open Process Explorer when XP is closing)
I’m trying to troubleshoot.
It’s not normal that the internal upgrade fails.
I did a uninstall, then clean up registry (both manually and with Registry Mechanic).
After reboot without avast! everything works OK at shutdown.
Then I reinstalled avast!.
First shutdown went normal.
Next shutdown hanged as earlier 
Install UPHClean (link above) and use event viewer to find out what’s the problem. Guessing what’s wrong doesn’t work.
What does UPHClean do?
I have removed all traces of avast! on the system before reinstalling.
Is there any debugging function I can use to check what is happening?
Nothing unnormal in the logs
It’s described in the article I have linked.
OK, I’ll try it and see if the system shuts down and what the event log says.
Hello, just a thought but you might be able to get an idea from checking the system Event Logs. Right click on My Computer and select Manage, then select the Event Viewer. You can go through the System and Application logs and by looking at the timestamps, maybe you can find the offending process.
–Wesley
Now I have tried all suggestions. Found nothing. Almost…
What I have found is that this only happends when both avast! and ZoneAlarm is running.
If I shut down one of them it does not hang.
And… It doesn’t always hang… I depends what applications I use between startup and shutdown.
I’ll try to stop different avast! modules before shutdown and see if one special is causing the hang…
PS! In the back of my head I can remember this occuring with a older version of avast! as well…
As far as I know, the combination of XP, ZA and Avast is not the best solution. There seem to be issues with ZA and Avast running under XP together.
Can’t you try another FW like PCTools Firewall maybe?
Want just to confirm that ZA and Avast is not a god combination on XP.
I seem to be having a more severe problem keeping me from upgrading on Windows 7 64-bit
Whenever I try to upgrade to 6.0.1000 from 5.1.889 it causes my system to refuse to launch programs and requires a system restore before it will let me use my computer again!
And before you ask: My firewall is Online Armor free
It updated smoothly on my Win 7 Pro x64 system.
Maybe you could try to uninstall Online Armor FW, uninstall Avast 5, reboot, then install Avast 6 from scratch and then install Online Armor.
Don’t know if that works, but maybe OA will recognize Avast 6 better if installed as last of the programs?
Just a thought, nothing more.
I like ZA and would not change it for anything.
Had no problem with it with avast 5.
BTW: I use ZA 4.5 (with only firewall, the newer version stink
Download the latest beta. Some problems with ZA and others with XP were solved.
Is there a way to set that I want to update to latest beta of avast! automaticly?