My Acer Travelmate 8104, XP Pro SP2, Avast V4.6 Home Edition hangs on shutdown.
The “Saving your settings” message is displayed and hangs before the “Windows is shutting down” message appears before power off. The power button must be held down to power off. The system hangs rather than is delayed as I have waited up to 4 hours for shutdown.
The workaround is to Rt-Click the Avast icon, select “Stop On-Access Protection”, wait until Avast stops all providers THEN select shutdown and the notebook shuts down correctly. The BIOS is at the most recent version.
Does any one have any better workarounds or fixes?
Does this happen only with the last avast version (update) or this is the first time you’re using avast and get this problem?
Which firewall do you use?
Any other security program?
Sure that’s a huge problem. Tell us did you find anything suspicious in log files by any chance ? (My Computer, right click, MANAGE) When Computer Management window is open, chose Event Viewer. Check all those log files inside the right panel for some error information and post back.
I’m sure Alwil guys would be very interested to see what’s causing this behaviour because it’s obvious it has something to do with avast! since manual stopping of avast! services helps you at shutdown time as you already mentioned.
Do you have in your taskbar 2 avast blue circles with the letters “a” and “i” ? or did you merge them into 1 (just the “a” circle). If merged into one, split them again (right click on the “a” circle, then click on VRDB, then split). See if that helps with your shutdown problems (it did for me).
I have had the shutdown problem for approx 4 months now. When I purchased the machine it had NAV installed but I manged to remove it and installed Avast. The shutdown problem probably occurred about 1 month after originally installing Avast. I update Avast automatically so didn’t associate it with the problem.
I have installed many applications and services as I use this notebook as a workhorse eg SQL Server, IINET, .Net apps, full MS Office Pro incl OneNote on client site and assumed the problem was related to one of these recent installs. During that time I have also reinstalled the Acer legacy drivers & reapplied XP SP2.
I finally related the problem to Avast by selectively terminating processes and services before attempting a shutdown. Of course Avast was the last suspect because it has always been there.
Do you by chance have any USB devices plugged into your computer? Some people claim that these devices can cause avast! to hang on shutdown.
Are your temp directories all empty?
Also, maybe as an experiment, an avast’s “program settings” (right click blue “a” circle icon in taskbar), in the troubleshooting section, switch the database from OBDC to XML… see if that helps.
I face this problem too. I have a DSL connection and I’ve noticed that I my startup/shutdown works fine when the DSL router is switched off, else the computer freezes.
I work on a XPhome SP2. As starfighter suggested, it could be due to the USB devices on my computer. (my DSL is connected to a USB port)
I am running Windows XP Pro x64 (clean install) and as soon as I installed Avast I noticed that Windows began to hang at shutdown. It gets to the “Windows is shutting down” and then it never does. I too have to use the power button to turn the PC off. I will try the fixes I have seen here when I get home tonight and report back. I am not thrilled about having to disconnect all my USB devices before shut-down but at least I will have hopefully determined the cause.
Glad the XML switch did the trick. It’s wierd… on one of my computers I can run avast! Home Edition with using ODBC, while the other, it has to be XML… both XP Home edition with SP2 and avast! home editon etc… go figure… ??? I blame it on aliens… 8)
If you keep mentioning word Aliens, these people will start to think about that, and apparently they will start digging… you want to blow the cover ? Is that what you want ? ;D ;D ;D ;D
I know some people will “kill” us for turning this off-topic, but I am sure we can afford that since this guy’s problem is solved now…
We almost trashed this thread with our alien-jokes, and it still helps people… Vlk, did you see that ? ;D ;D
Few good jokes can never trash the thread… besides so many people feel good. They feel so relaxed and still they can find solution for their problems… am I right or what ?
Also would like to add that windows x64 shuts down faster.
Update: after 2 days of doing this i have to say it doesnt work becouse it still hangs so im not sure whats going on. im about to uninstall my antivirus antill i can a working one.
I think mabe it’s the way the servises are set up with dependencies perhaps if you just remove the dependencies and set all that stuff to auto it will shut down. if you stop all the servises before you shutdown it will not hang.
<—yellow circles.
