Avast - has anyone else experienced this?

[xfile]

First of all, you cross-posted to three newsgroups for a problem that you
have not thoroughly examined and determined.

Secondly, it never occurs to you, again as an experienced "technician", that
it could be a hardware-related problem?

Thirdly, throughout your posts, you keep the emphasis on Avast.

You are either a terrible troubleshooter or a very poor story teller.

Take your pick.

 

[Richard Urban]

I cross posted to hardware because a hard drive was under duress. I posted
to security because Avast was involved (possibly), I posted to general
because this is the group that gets the most action - good and bad,

But again, you **KNOW** this, You are not stupid - just confrontational.

 

[Paul Smith]

Certainly a bit unusual.

Do you have Avast on the Windows Vista partition too?

 

[Richard Urban]

I also have Avast on my Vista partition. The same thing is happening there,
but to a lesser degree. My Windows 7 O/S is quiet now.

Later today I plan to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials and reinstall
Avast on Windows 7 - just to see what transpires.

I think that when it is sorted I am going to return the drive anyway (I have
an RMA). All that head banging could not have been good for the internals.

 

[MLD]

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.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

If Avast was the real culprit there would be WD drives (including mine) that
would be banging and slamming all over the wide world of the internet. If
Avast actually did cause the drive to go haywire--dump the drive!!
MLD