Avast - has anyone else experienced this?

[Richard Urban]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was talking to Western Digital today and they gave me an RMA to return a
"defective" 1 gig hard drive that sounded like a garbage truck for the past
4-5 days. I could hear the drive in the next room while watching television.
I'm glad to say I don't have to return the drive.

Today I downloaded the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials for testing
purposes. I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. After a reboot (I always do
this after an install) the hard drive was quiet! The drive had previously
sounded like the heads were slamming into the stops. What a noise. I also
checked my processes in Task Manager and found that one Avast process had
over 22 **BILLION** read accesses within 1/2 hour after booting up.

Anyway, all now seems well. I guess it was an Avast update that started my
main hard drive going spastic.

 

[Curious]

Are you sure you don't still have to return the drive? AFAIK WD cross ships
RMA drives to get the new drive to you faster but also requires a credit
card number so they can bill you for the new drive if you do not return the
RMA'd drive with a certain time frame.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I believe he meant that the drive is no longer acting sick, now that Avast
is history.

 

[webster72n]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was talking to Western Digital today and they gave me an RMA to return a
"defective" 1 gig hard drive that sounded like a garbage truck for the
past 4-5 days. I could hear the drive in the next room while watching
television. I'm glad to say I don't have to return the drive.

Today I downloaded the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials for testing
purposes. I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. After a reboot (I always
do this after an install) the hard drive was quiet! The drive had
previously sounded like the heads were slamming into the stops. What a
noise. I also checked my processes in Task Manager and found that one
Avast process had over 22 **BILLION** read accesses within 1/2 hour after
booting up.

Anyway, all now seems well. I guess it was an Avast update that started my
main hard drive going spastic.

My Avast don't present me with any of the symptoms you describe and I
definitely don't think it is the culprit.
Curious probably has the right idea.

Harry.

 

[Dave T.]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was talking to Western Digital today and they gave me an RMA to return
a "defective" 1 gig hard drive that sounded like a garbage truck for the
past 4-5 days. I could hear the drive in the next room while watching
television. I'm glad to say I don't have to return the drive.

Today I downloaded the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials for testing
purposes. I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. After a reboot (I
always do this after an install) the hard drive was quiet! The drive had
previously sounded like the heads were slamming into the stops. What a
noise. I also checked my processes in Task Manager and found that one
Avast process had over 22 **BILLION** read accesses within 1/2 hour
after booting up.

Anyway, all now seems well. I guess it was an Avast update that started
my main hard drive going spastic.

Can't imagine what caused it. Been using Avast for a couple years, never
heard of such. Perhaps something got corrupted.

Dave T.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Are you sure you don't still have to return the drive? AFAIK WD cross ships
RMA drives to get the new drive to you faster but also requires a credit
card number so they can bill you for the new drive if you do not return the
RMA'd drive with a certain time frame.

I was going to reply similarly, but then I realized that when he said
"I'm glad to say I don't have to return the drive," Richard was
talking about what developed in his second paragraph. He doesn't have
to return it because he no longer wants to replace it.

As he said "Anyway, all now seems well."

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My Avast don't present me with any of the symptoms you describe and I
definitely don't think it is the culprit.

Although I run NOD32 on my main computer, I run Avast on two other
computers here. I've also installed it for several other people. Like
you, I haven't had any problems such as the one Richard had.

Why he has experienced the "22 **BILLION** read accesses within 1/2
hour," I don't know.

 

[JEWboy]

why is the drive so small 1GB?
Also I hate WesternDigital, much prefer Seagate, HITACHI (favorite), etc.,
not WD

 

[Drew]

what is really strange is I had a somewhat similar experience with all my
ram (4 Gigs) being used (10mb) left and my processor was thrashing away at
97% It is a intel quad core 6600 when I finally got task manager open took
about a hour for it to open I found a single process or should I say 72
instances of it running. However different antivirus and different process
(Logitech updater) but similar problem.. strange indeed!! I thought my
computer was going to have a meltdown!

 

[James Matthews]

Wow that's a lot of reads. It probably wore down the drive quite bad... This
issue would be unique to Avast I use Nod32 and find it quite nice and
subtle.

 

[FromTheRafters]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was talking to Western Digital today and they gave me an RMA to
return a "defective" 1 gig hard drive that sounded like a garbage
truck for the past 4-5 days. I could hear the drive in the next room
while watching television. I'm glad to say I don't have to return the
drive.

Today I downloaded the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials for
testing purposes. I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. After a
reboot (I always do this after an install) the hard drive was quiet!
The drive had previously sounded like the heads were slamming into the
stops. What a noise. I also checked my processes in Task Manager and
found that one Avast process had over 22 **BILLION** read accesses
within 1/2 hour after booting up.

Anyway, all now seems well. I guess it was an Avast update that
started my main hard drive going spastic.

I don't see how that is possible. I would still be very suspicious of
the harddrive. Thrashing can be software related, but doesn't quite
reach "garbage truck" level - not like defective bearings would.

 

[Richard Urban]

It sounded like a small metal can with a few nuts and bolts in it being
shaken.

I removed Avast and it has been quiet for hours. Some kind of interaction
with the particular hardware in my system I suspect. I am waiting to see if
it starts up again.

I still have the RMA. I was not going to do a cross ship.

 

[xfile]

Judging from the cross-posting, is it intended for a product announcement,
or it meant to say, dump Avast and use MSE?

 

[Richard Urban]

Just trying to find out if others have had the same experience and if they
found a cure. I dual boot with Vista and Windows 7. It is NOT happening on
the Vista side.

I frequently ignore what you have to say.

 

[xfile]

It is NOT happening on
the Vista side.

Then why did you cross-post to different "Vista" newsgroups?

And the core message is that you downloaded and installed MSE beta, and the
problem went away, and as an experienced technician and an MVP, you didn't
do any previous troubleshooting for the noise? How unlikely.

I frequently ignore what you have to say.

Which is fine just that your track record shows that you are not exactly an
objective person.

 

[Woger]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was talking to Western Digital today and they gave me an RMA to return a
"defective" 1 gig hard drive that sounded like a garbage truck for the past
4-5 days. I could hear the drive in the next room while watching television.
I'm glad to say I don't have to return the drive.

Today I downloaded the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials for testing
purposes. I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. After a reboot (I always do
this after an install) the hard drive was quiet! The drive had previously
sounded like the heads were slamming into the stops. What a noise. I also
checked my processes in Task Manager and found that one Avast process had
over 22 **BILLION** read accesses within 1/2 hour after booting up.

Anyway, all now seems well. I guess it was an Avast update that started my
main hard drive going spastic.

I use Avast but for me gives far to many false positives, I use the Free
Kaspersky to compare..

http://downloads5.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/AVPTool/

 

[Richard Urban]

You fail to either read or comprehend.

Both I and Western Digital had nailed it down as a failing drive. They even
gave me an MRA number. Removing Avast eliminated the problem. It has nothing
to do with M/S's new security program except I loaded it after I removed
Avast. I was giving the chain of events. I cross posted to the three
newsgroups that I thought would get the best exposure. But you KNOW this.

Can you comprehend THAT?

 

[+Bob+]

You fail to either read or comprehend.

Both I and Western Digital had nailed it down as a failing drive. They even
gave me an MRA number. Removing Avast eliminated the problem. It has nothing
to do with M/S's new security program except I loaded it after I removed
Avast. I was giving the chain of events. I cross posted to the three
newsgroups that I thought would get the best exposure. But you KNOW this.

Can you comprehend THAT?

Avast is a red herring. First, you'd need to re-install it and see the
problem recur, then remove it and see the problem go away again to
have any sort of a reasonable test. Second, no one anywhere has
reported a similar problem with Avast so it's very unlikely.

I'd wager that you have a hardware problem. Your drive has temporarily
recovered due to a change in the portion that's being accessed or file
locations. It will act up again, or more likely just die when it's
least convenient. Do the tests, prove it to yourself.

 

[Dominic Payer]

If you have run the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic from
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en and identified a
hardware problem AVAST is a red herring.

If you haven't, I suggest you do so now. Intermittent hardware problems
usually end in data loss when they are ignored in the hope that they
have resolved themselves.

 

[RalfG]

It sounded like a small metal can with a few nuts and bolts in it being
shaken.

I removed Avast and it has been quiet for hours. Some kind of interaction
with the particular hardware in my system I suspect. I am waiting to see
if it starts up again.

I still have the RMA. I was not going to do a cross ship.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

Avast will scan every file (of monitored types) that is being read or
written so something else could be accessing the drive and Avast would just
be responding normally to that activity. When I notice apparently
inexplicable AV activity I activate Avast's detailed info option for the
relevant on-access scanning module, on the Advanced tab under Customize. It
can at least identify the files being scanned and their location. OTOH
whatever was causing it may have completed what it wanted to do while your
AV was uninstalled, so the symptom might never happen again. ;-)