Avast and PG not compatible

Been running into a LOT of problems with Avast anti-virus and a techy on their forum posted this:

My quote:
There has already been some speculation in other threads that ProcessGuard may have something to do with these problems - even though many of them happened with PG disabled.

Their reply:
PG, even disabled, seems to block or redirect things at low level... the user can't even know what is happening...

Any comments or advice? If true it looks as though I have to choose between Avast and PG.

 

JimTheMuso,

Just making sure - this is a complete disabling of protection and not simply shutting down the GUI? Sorry if it seems too obvious.

That said, I have run into instances, not involving PG by the way, in which disabling the application working at a low level did not remedy the conflict, but uninstalling it did.

Blue

 

Yes - complete.

 

A few additional questions - what other processes are running all the time, do any avast related processes show up in the logs, when you disable, do you disable/restart/then use avast, and is the PG installation a completely default installation or have some of the settings been customized?

Blue

 

No Avast processes in the logs. My method now is to disable all PG processes (I hope) using Codestuff Starter startup manager and then reboot. If anything PG related shows in Task Manager then I stop it. Bearing in mind I'm not a techy so I hope I am correct in saying nothing is customized in PG. I just allow things I think are OK when they crop up and I normally put it into learning mode when I run anything for the first time - or when anything doesn't run for the first time because PG stops it. Similar problems in Avast forum seem to be only with PG or something similar so I obviously have MS antispyware and firewall running.

 

FWIW, I was using Avast Pro with PG for about 4 months without any problems, they worked well for me. Then I moved to Nod and PG works well with that too.

 

It's only in the last few weeks it's gone wrong since Avast brought out new versions.

 

There's your first mistake. To disable PG, simply untick "protection enabled". PG now does nothing. Doing anything else only confuses the situation, and we don't really know if you have protection enabled. Virtually ALL protection is in the driver, this has nothing to do with startup programs.

As for changing things while disabled, PG does not. It also does not block programs running in kernel mode.

There should be no compatibility problems, really there should be no problems with virtually any program due to the design of PG. I'll test avast! 4 Home now with PG 3.150 and XP Pro SP2

 

So far, so good - all seems fine.

I did have to manually add a couple of services to the protection list, but I am now using a test build. If they are not already added, make sure you have these protected and also set to always allow to run.

ashAvast.exe
ashDisp.exe
ashMaiSv.exe
ashServ.exe
ashWebSv.exe

I know there are more, but these are the main ones I found.

Now.. what sort of problems am I looking for ? I'll try 3.150 in a moment.. but if anything, it will be even more compatible than the test build I just tried.

 

Exactly the same with PG 3.150 release version - I see no problems. If there is anything I can try to reproduce, please post it here.

 

The problem was related to the updating.
Try manually invoking the program or virus definitions (iAVS) update by right-clicking the avast tray icon.

Also, try doing it from an account with limited rights (non admin).

In this case, the GUI communicates with a service (running under the LocalSystem account) to invoke the update - and this is what seemed to be broken. FYI it uses a named pipe to do the communication.


Thanks
Vlk

 

Ok will do.. I'm pretty sure the auto update did work for me though and PG doesn't block named pipes. Either way we'll try to make sure it does work soon if there is a problem

 

This post from the Avast forum on this same subject may be of interest - particularly the mention of "disable not good enough":

Hello,
I had this same issue november 2004 and was helped on this forum.
See post (Mal76 november 30th 2004).
The Proccess Guard splash screen did not show long enough for me to allow the updated avast.
The only way I could overcome the problem was uninstall Proccess Guard
(disable not good enough) install avast update, reinstall process guard.
I do not use PG now as I had this problem at each avast programme update.
hope this helps,
regards Mal76.

 

Ok sorry for the delay. It seems to be fine.. first it DIDN'T work - avast.setup tried to install a driver (gave error about privileges).

Allowed this and tried again, SUCCESS :

Information about current update:
Total time: 59 s

- Program: Already up to date
(current version 4.6.739)
- Vps: Updated
(previous version: 0549-0, updated version: 0549-3)

Server: download35.avast.com (67.15.227.25)
Downloaded files: 8 (13.31 KB)
Download time: 6 s

 

No problems in my limited account, any problems would have been related to the same thing above - avast.setup needs driver access