Crash when I install AV

Wayne wrote:

Well, I still have a problem. As I said, I wiped the hard drive
(format) and re-did the W7 install. As soon as I then installed
Avira , and then undid it and installed Avast, the PC went into crash
mode. IE, it powered off both times..

From where did you download the Avira installer? Did you download the
latest version available from Avira's own web site?

Same queries regarding from where you obtained Avast and its version.

After uninstalling Avira (which you said already exhibited defects so
that taints a subsequent AV install) and BEFORE installing another
anti-virus program (Avast), did you reboot the computer? A full (cold)
reboot, not a hybrid or hibernate reload.

I re-did the same W7 install, and tried free AVG, and lo. it has not
crashed yet after 24 hours. Task Manager says AVG is indeed running.
What do you think now?

FYI: AVG was acquired by Avast.

https://press.avast.com/avast-closes...g-technologies

wrote:
snippings...

Well, here I be - back again. Still have the problem.
I tried installing, on the HP Pavillion, a 'fresh' and different
64-bit W7, a Ultimate SP1, with no additional installs, except three
AVs - AVAST, ARIVA, and KASPERSKY one at a time of course. I left the
PC on 24 hours, and found all setups crashed the PC (powered it off),
in a few hours or so. Then I left the same PC on, 24 hours, with no
AV. It has now stayed on now for four days. The PC is a AMD Athlon
64X2 dual core 2.10 GHz with 2GB RAM.
I haven't studied Paul's post yet - I need to of course.
New one on me.
JW
I

So what we know is, real time AVs tend to scan the
disk at some point. And during the execution of that
scan, the box tipped over.

if the machine was connected to the Internet, then
they could also be calling home and getting updated
AV definitions. So the network driver gets used
a tiny bit.

I suspect some kind of "health issue" with the
PC, unless you're not telling us something about
the composition of the machine (multiple drives,
malware on the other drives). It's even remotely
possible, if there is a worm on your LAN, living
on another PC, it could be infecting your machine.
If it was Sality for example, the machine would
eventually be a wreck from a software perspective.
So we know just because you haven't noted a complete
meltdown, it's not that.

I like a combination of memtest86+, Prime95 (or
other stress tester that does math with a known
answer), and a disk test utility of some sort
(WDC or Seagate). Just to make sure the machine
is healthy.

Note that some AMD processors from that era, showed
signs of electromigration. People used to overclock
them, and the stable frequency would drop and drop.
And the stable frequency would end up being less
than the nominal frequency. If you run Prime95, that's
a pretty sensitive test for such stability.

You don't have to run Windows for Prime95 either.
You can use a Linux LiveCD and download a copy
from mersenne.org . Running Linux gives a "second opinion"
about your hardware, as if it crashes or icons start
disappearing from the desktop, that means it's flaky
there too. And it's a hardware issue. If Linux
stayed up, and no tests done from there would fail,
then I would be really puzzled.

https://www.mersenne.org/download/

A quiescent PC (no software running, no background
tasks) can sit there for a hundred hours without
crashing. On some hardware issues, just moving the
mouse cursor six inches in that state, and it
immediately crashes (a memory problem). And if you
run Prime95, it can error out in 2 seconds. That's
just to show the time span difference, between
"determined testing" and just looking at the damn
thing from your chair :-) I was getting the bombing
of Prime95 in 2 seconds, on my AthlonXP setup. The
one that was very sensitive to RAM quality. Some
CAS2 RAM fixed that nicely at the time. But I cannot
say I was all that impressed with NVidia at the
time, as their chipset was the issue. Back in those
days, the RAM wasn't connected directly to the
processor, so you couldn't blame AMD for that one.

Paul

David E. Ross wrote:
wrote:

AVs - AVAST, ARIVA, and KASPERSKY one at a time of course.

You had all three anti-virus applications running at the same time?


--
Mike Easter

On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:16:50 -0700, Mike Easter
wrote:

David E. Ross wrote:
wrote:

AVs - AVAST, ARIVA, and KASPERSKY one at a time of course.

You had all three anti-virus applications running at the same time?

one at a time

wrote:
Mike Easter
David E. Ross wrote:
wrote:

AVs - AVAST, ARIVA, and KASPERSKY one at a time of course.

You had all three anti-virus applications running at the same time?

one at a time

Yeah, I was trying to point that 'one at a time of course' out to DER.

--
Mike Easter

On 8/16/2017 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:16:50 -0700, Mike Easter
wrote:

David E. Ross wrote:
wrote:

AVs - AVAST, ARIVA, and KASPERSKY one at a time of course.

You had all three anti-virus applications running at the same time?

one at a time


Okay. Then tell us which one was running when you get your crash.

--
David E. Ross
http://www.rossde.com/

After the 12 August tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, President
Trump issued an evasive, equivocating statement. This is quite
understandable. After all, Trump did not want to alienate his
core supporters, many of whom are white supremacists. Trump's
staff tried to explain away his statement and put a positive light
on it, but they were merely putting lipstick on a pig.

Only after pressure from his own Republican party did Trump denounce
the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists as criminalson 14 August.
His delay in backtracking his prior equivocation makes me doubt his
sincerity. All doubt was erased when Trump appeared to backtrack
again, returning to his prior equivocation on Tuesday, 15 August.

wrote:

Well guess what?
I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
yet to shut down. Problem solved.
Thanks
JW

I'd sleep better, if I knew you also tested the
new installed RAM with memtest86+ :-)

Paul

On Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:43:51 -0400, Paul
wrote:

wrote:

Well guess what?
I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
yet to shut down. Problem solved.
Thanks
JW

I'd sleep better, if I knew you also tested the
new installed RAM with memtest86+ :-)

Paul
Can do
JW

On Sat, 19 Aug 2017 04:35:33 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:43:51 -0400, Paul
wrote:

wrote:

Well guess what?
I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
yet to shut down. Problem solved.
Thanks
JW

I'd sleep better, if I knew you also tested the
new installed RAM with memtest86+ :-)

Paul
Can do
JW
Been a while since I ran a memtest86. Not sure how it should behave.
Anyway, I downloaded V4.3.7, and ran it from a CD. Showed no errors -
tried all menu choices, including #4.
Thanks for your interest.
JW

wrote

| Well guess what?
| I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
| been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
| yet to shut down. Problem solved.


You might also try putting them back. I've run into
problems with RAM before, taken them out one at
a time to find the culprit, then eventually ended up
with all of them going back, concluding that at least
one of them was a tiny bit loose. A good, tight
connection is *so* important with the parts inside
the case. And moving a machine in transport can
loosen those connections.

Mayayana wrote:
wrote

| Well guess what?
| I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
| been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
| yet to shut down. Problem solved.


You might also try putting them back. I've run into
problems with RAM before, taken them out one at
a time to find the culprit, then eventually ended up
with all of them going back, concluding that at least
one of them was a tiny bit loose. A good, tight
connection is *so* important with the parts inside
the case. And moving a machine in transport can
loosen those connections.

The thickness of multi-layer PCBs, isn't controlled that tightly.

When the press operator inspects their laminate collection, they
have to pick and choose laminates, to get the correct overall
dimension. On controlled impedance products, there isn't a lot
of maneuvering room when it comes to thickness (each layer
thickness also has to be controlled, to meet the measured
electrical impedance target). A "test coupon" on the edge
of a larger PCB assembly, is where a TDR is connected to
measure the impedance. The test coupon is a means to accept
or reject a PCB lot, for electrical performance.

We had to reject one shipment of finished blanks at work,
because they'd managed to go more than 10% over the
specified thickness (too fat!). They can also err in the other
direction, and make things too thin. Usually, a too-thin
item, it's a "purposeful" error. The person making the
product (blank), knows what they're doing, and they've done
this when compromising on some other requirement.
Fabrication requires the operator of the press, to
trade all the requirements, and stay within the tolerance
envelope, so the customer won't be ****ed off with them.
I've seen DIMMs like that, and the surface finish and
reflectivity tells me non-standard (unusual) material
choices were made. Maybe the dielectric constant was
quite different or something. And this is still a fiberglass
and resin based product, but something is different about it.

We had a local representative, who would come in, and in
a two hour lecture, attempt to explain all this stuff.
But it's pretty hard to cover everything the guy knows, in
two hours. So he's only able to give a rough feel for
the job he does. Basically, when you send him a design,
that dude is adjusting *everything* :-( No aspect of
the job you send him, is "untouched". Everything is
translated, and fed through a $5000 piece of software,
to meet the spec, rather than the actual data in the
design file shipped. Very unsettling. If the plot file
said to make a copper track 5 mils wide, he'd adjust it and
make it 5.2 mils wide. You'd need a microscope to
see these corrections. He does an ERC check to make
sure no modification he's made, caused a short circuit.

I had one of these twits, *erase* something they noticed
in a design. Now, normally I would reward such a person
with a "good catch" verbal award. Except, he didn't phone
me. He didn't warn me. That there was a short circuit in the
color keys... It looked like a photo-plotter error. A second
company, upon receiving the design, phoned me immediately
and warned me. And sure enough, I could see the plotter error.
(The plotter uses a light, an aperture wheel, and "flashes"
light patterns on to a photo-resist. The wrong aperture
had been selected by the software.)

So when you get a DIMM or a motherboard, that something
is out of the ordinary, "wee willy adjuster" could've done it.
I don't consider this a good engineering workflow, but
what are you going to do ? They're all doing this,
so you cannot punish all of them for messing around.

We did actually put some of these shops on the banned list.
It all depended on what sort of grief they caused.

*******

The edge of the DIMM, the finish has varied from
one generation to another.

Ones shaped like this (seen on DDR2 and DDR3 here)

| |
|__|

those are likely to be making poor contact because they're
not actually fully seated. It's difficult to get a satisfying
"click" from the latches with those. Those hurt your
fingers to install, especially when the heat spreader
doesn't have an area suitable for fingers to push on.
So maybe one end is riding high.

The older ones, the edge-card had a finish like this.
This is considered "optional" in terms of a JEDEC spec.
They don't have to do this. This involves more process
steps, although with NC machines, it's just time on the
machine. They have to mill a profile, put the keying
slot on the thing, so some amount of NC is still required.
The square edge in the above one, can be covered by milling
the entire edge.

{ {
{ |
\/

The contacts in the socket, don't have any spring action
to them. (Not like the contacts in an RJ-45.) There's no
compliance to them that I can see. And the finish
on the top of the contact, when mixed with the squared
DIMM profile (the top one), had better deflect the DIMM
so it doesn't catch on a contact. That's called
"connector capture" - the design has to encourage the
items to mate, so they don't bind and stuff gets
broken. Mechanical engineers do overall tolerance analysis,
to make sure stuff like that works.

It's been a long time, since I saw an actual "bend" to
a contact in a memory slot. Nothing like that has happened
to me recently. The bent pin (a slight bend, not a 90
degree failure like in a male IDE connector), was long enough
ago, I can't even tell you what generation of RAM that was.
Could have been SDRAM, or FPM/EDO or earlier, it was that long ago.

I can't see how you could bend something like that, back
into place. At least, if the contacts are as stiff as
the modern ones are. It's bound to continue to
stick out and get in the way.

Paul

On Sat, 19 Aug 2017 08:42:59 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:


wrote

| Well guess what?
| I swapped out the two 1GB Ram cards for two spares I had. Said PC has
| been on for some 72 hours continuously even with Avast installed. Has
| yet to shut down. Problem solved.


You might also try putting them back. I've run into
problems with RAM before, taken them out one at
a time to find the culprit, then eventually ended up
with all of them going back, concluding that at least
one of them was a tiny bit loose. A good, tight
connection is *so* important with the parts inside
the case. And moving a machine in transport can
loosen those connections.

Okay
JW