Avast killed it...

katz

katz

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Guess I should have taken heed from the other thread warning against using Avast/ Win 10.

Although it my defense, I have successfully installed in on six or so systems thus far...until today. Performed an upgrade on a Dell laptop, Win 7 to Win 10. All went well and I had been using it for several hours. Installed Avast - shortly thereafter, a blue screen pops up - "win32kfull.sys". System will restart after they collect information...counted up to 100% & sat on that page for 45 min.

Got tired of waiting, rebooted, same blue screen. Can't get to safe mode/f8...Finally on one of my reboot/f8 attempts I was greeted with "diagnosing your pc". The pc went thru several screens, finally presented me with options for recovery.

I decided to go with system restore back to the time before the Avast install. It is finalizing the restore now - fingers crossed.

Avast's website confirms that it is indeed compatible with Win 10. Not sure what the issue is with this particular laptop/system.
 
katz,

It happened kinda like that for me, I ditched them when they went to version 8 (I think that was the one?) a few years back. Version 5,6 and 7 were rock-solid for me and my customers, I even was a re-seller for them! Ever since the "Certified for Windows 8" Avast version came out, I noticed tons of "program issues" and real "bugs". Don't get me wrong, the Avast Virus detection rates and engine (when working!) are mostly spot-on, as far as protection goes. I have seen that Avast has a fairly complicated "Engine" with a lot of moving parts in the OS, as compared to something else like the old "Vipre Antivirus Engine" from GFIMax.
I think the fundamental changes that occurred in the Windows 8 and 10 back-end really changed some things that Avast's engine took for granted - and they still don't have it sorted out. I'm glad I didn't wait for them to fix it, lol!

Most notable moments:
1. I have a good client (multiple systems, multiple visits/yr) and I kept telling him for 2 years I had been having problems with Avast and stopped recommending it... well he got a new laptop and noticed it got "slow" over the course of a few months, so he brings it over. He's pretty tech savvy so we both look at the logs and see that Avast services are failing/restarting.. general weirdness all over the OS pointing to Avast... So, try uninstalling and reloading Avast, right? I tell him the whole situation BEFORE I do the uninstall - the VM testing, my clients machines in large percentages (10-20%) being borked and needing wipes. He said do it... and I uninstalled it right then and there in front of him - reboot and BOOM. Bluescreen. No recovery/system restore. It was a fairly new laptop for him so not a big deal. But man, did I look good, knowing my stuff! ;)

2. I had Avast on my main business rig and it took it out one morning. Spent the day getting that back up to a working point as my backup solution refused to discover the RAID controller (EASEUS Backup at the time).
 
For info, we are starting to get 'start menu and cortana have stopped working' jobs with Windows 10, all have Avast installed.

Apparently Avast isn't the only cause of this error but all the jobs I have had so far, have had it installed (and Avast is commonly mentioned online about this error).
 
System restore completed successfully, Avast removed, and I'm back up to date again with all the software. So far, no issues/blue screens, etc. So I think we all know what caused this one. Hate to see a good program go bad... :oops:
 
Yup on a small number of machines avast is causing serious problems after the win10 upgrade. I just had one yesterday where it was locking up some executables in a limbo state.
 
This is a common problem with antivirus and windows 10 upgrades best thing to do is un-install av then upgrade and install the newest version of the AV there are minor code changes which can cause issues.
Does not happen just with avast but i have seen this with other AV as well ,avira,bitdefender,nortons and mcafee.
 
I have yet to see this issue. So this is really only happening on Windows 10 upgrades? I have it install on a couple laptops of friends and family with Windows 10 and still no reported issues.
 
TechLady, I found this on Avast's site -

https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB231

I went back thru my records and so far I have installed avast on 17 Win 10 systems, and only this Dell laptop gave me problems. It was an upgrade from Win 7 Home Premium x64. Have you other techs had this happen only on Dells, or other systems as well?
 
My experience with Avast and Windows 10 so far: stay the hell away from their paid products. The free one seems to get along ok, but the paid Avast often does not.
 
I've just removed Avast (free) from three laptops I have here in the shop, a higher end Toshiba, mid grade Dell, low grade Compaq. Apparently it was a total resource hog as well, because these pc's are now performing noticeably faster, probably like an 80% increase in speed. For the time being, I'm done with Avast.

As far as a free solution goes, do you all feel that Windows Defender is "good enough?" I've read a couple of recent articles which praised Defender up pretty well.
 
A few years ago I would have said yes, and did recommend MSE, but now I will not stand behind any free A/V. I only stand behind the Managed A/V package I built around my RMM supplied A/V and a few other items. If they are not interested in the package I have built over several years and stand behind then they can try to find something free to use and I will be available when they get infected again. Very few people do not take my Complete Internet Security package so it's not a big deal for us.
 
katz said:
As far as a free solution goes, do you all feel that Windows Defender is "good enough?" I've read a couple of recent articles which praised Defender up pretty well.
Click to expand...

The only "article" you need is av-comparatives.org. Everything else is just noise. MS defender placed dead last March-June 2015 (Last quarterly full write-up?) and August-November it's 4th from the bottom.

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
 
phaZed said:
The only "article" you need is av-comparatives.org. Everything else is just noise. MS defender placed dead last March-June 2015 (Last quarterly full write-up?) and August-November it's 4th from the bottom.

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
Click to expand...
But it has been doing better lately, which is a big improvement if it can stay there steadily, and probably better than it was when people were actually using it as a part of their AV solution for clients.

On a side note, Panda (and it is the free version they test) has managed to stay up there, although with a fair amount of false positives.
 
trevm999 said:
But it has been doing better lately, which is a big improvement if it can stay there steadily, and probably better than it was when people were actually using it as a part of their AV solution for clients.
Click to expand...

Yes, their detection rates have gone up, but everyone else has proportionally gone up as well. We can debate what the reason is - less malware as of late, Windows 10 OS, etc.

From March 2014 till Dec 2015 MSSE has been pretty much at the bottom of the barrel. If you want to count their recent 3-month trend of 19th out of 23 a "improvement", well, technically I guess you're right.

I'll be recommending something else! ;)

Made this chart from data on av-comparatives:
chart.jpg
 
Last edited:
Haha, yeah, I wouldn't recommend using it, but it is encouraging to see the improvement, and also funny to think that people used to recommend it when it was probably worse than it is now.
And I think I read that they have only been using Windows 7 (or at least that is what they used for November), I'd be curious to see what everything looks like on Windows 10.
 
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