Resolved stability problems

Hi all

I'm having trouble with heavy duty stability problems on my XP box; all was running smoothly until the day AVG updated to v9.0.790

Immediately after this update I started getting crashes when checking email; we have several email accounts; the first couple would check OK, but the 3rd crashed the machine - hard - sending off the crash reports, all were corrupted.

I discovered that I could prevent these crashes by either i) disabling AVG email scanner, or ii) (temporarily!) disabling Kerio firewall.

(contacting a friend who runs XP Pro using AVG Free & Kerio 2.1.5, we discovered exactly the same behaviour: as soon as AVG updated to 9.0.790, crashes upon checking email (either Mailwasher or Outlook Express) almost always when checking the 3rd account)

The only stability issues beforehand were that the machine would tend to crash due to overheating when trying to play a video clip (the cooling in the original case was terrible - I've improved the airflow considerably since)

OK - turning off AVG email scanner solved the first problem; but the machine has never been the same since. It had been running OK in this configuration (i.e. with AVG & Kerio) for many months previously.

The machine had been left very "ratty ". At each bootup quicklaunch icons appear scrambled; sometimes system tray icons too; and the desktop would "hiccup ": it would appear, then the screen would blank for a moment and when it came back on some icons would be missing for a short time, after which the desktop would "rebuild" itself back to normal appearance. That didn't happen beforehand.

The scrambled quick-launch and systray icons could be mended OK by using TweakUI "rebuild icons" option (that's the only thing I've used TweakUI for on this machine - no fiddling with anything else)

In its new "ratty" state, I now started getting trouble with Firefox - lots and lots of crashes. Not crashes while browsing with Firefox - it didn't generally get that far, the crash is when Firefox first launches. On the rare occasions when Firefox actually launched OK I could browse fine. Opera browser seemed unaffected, though. So I uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox a few times, and tried some other versions of Firefox... to no avail. I have a strong suspicion that whatever got "damaged" is left behind when Firefox uninstalled - much in the same way that if I remove Firefox and then reinstall it somehow knows that I was using noscript beforehand.

The machine was by now getting pretty unusable, so I tried repairing XP from the CD (and then toddled off to WindowsUpdate for something like 62 patches ). This was perhaps a bad move, as I seem to have lost my previous restore points - and I now suspect that one of those might have afforded a cure.

Rattier and rattier - by the time I'd been through a dozen or so more crashes trying to get Firefox to work again, I started getting "real" BSODs - and always the same one: a Stop at A90C7406, and always fwdrv.sys

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There isn't that much user data on this machine; I'm in the process of backing it up. Most of the "hard work" gets done here on a Win98 box behind the scenes - the primary purpose of the XP box is to be the internet-facing machine.

Of course, I would dearly like to regain the original stability of the XP machine - and would appreciate advice on the best way to proceed. Should I attempt to wipe the HDD and start afresh? (but doesn't that mean reactivating etc.? - I've never had to do this with XP before)

TIA, and best wishes, HJ.

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PC Make & Model Viglen, ???
Mainboard Asus P5GD1-VM
Processor Intel Pentium 4 520, 2800 MHz (14 x 200)
Memory 503 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
Video Adapter Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL / Intel GMA 900
Hard Drive #1 WD 80GB SATA, single partition, NTFS
Hard Drive #2 Blank
Hard Drive #3 Blank
Hard Drive #4 Blank
Optical Drive #1 SONY CD-RW CRX230ED (52x/32x/52x CD-RW)
Optical Drive #2 Blank
Floppy Drive? 3.5" generic floppy
Internet Connection 1 Cable Modem (via Router Belkin FD5231-4)
Internet Connection 2 Dialup Modem: ESS ES56H-PI
Monitor #1 ACER V173 (via KVM)
Operating System Windows XP Home SP3
32/64 Bit OS 32-bit
Antivirus AVG Free 9.0.790
Firewall Kerio 2.1.5

 

Your BSOD is caused by Kerio, I use it myself but fortunately only see these once or twice a month(for me that's acceptable). There may be a compatibility issue with AVG (I use Avira) that is escalating the issue.

It would appear you have to make a choice Kerio or AVG.

Regarding FF problems that could be an additional symptom of the Kerio issue.

I'd recommend dropping AVG (it's not as good as it was in my opinion). The only reason I've stuck with Kerio is it's small footprint but other free firewalls are also available if you decide to take that route.

 

Hi Wildfire, thanks for replying...

...yup, if it comes down to the choice between dropping AVG and dropping Kerio I'd far rather keep Kerio.

Regarding Firefox: looking around I find that it's possible to remove the user profile; am going to try that in case it's become corrupted.

But what I'm really after is to repair XP itself - properly - it didn't "splutter" before this mess started. Mind, I'm getting all sorts of barmy sets of icons in the system tray - which could be quite funny (in a despairing sort of way) - never a dull moment they're different at each bootup! Surely I shouldn't have to keep mending them with TweakUI each time?

I suppose I'm hoping someone will come up with a "magic bullet" solution which could repair XP without having to reinstall from scratch. But that's probably a hope too far this time... something seems to have "nobbled" the core of XP itself, and the repair from CD didn't fix it. Which probably means registry woes? ...which is why I'm bemoaning the loss of the restore points.

best wishes, HJ.

 

As you say there isn't much user data so a backup, clean install would likely be your quickest course of action. Obviously be sure to get latest drivers (particulary chipset/graphics) after the install.

If you don't have the setup files for Kerio you can find them here and if you do decide to go for Avira this can be found here. I'm sure you don't need reminding (but others may) I would strongly recommend you at least connect the system behind a NAT router before connecting to the internet whilst getting updates, security files etc.

TIP: Install KERIO after updates, AV etc.

 

thanks again Wildfire - read and noted

busy trying to prune out all relics from Firefox; also I've found a remover tool which claims to get rid of AVG relics; not expecting wonders but it's surely worth a try

will let you know how it goes - probably tomorrow though as work beckons

very best, HJ

 

(resolved)

Hi

Too much damage. I even got into issues because the WPA no longer matched the hardware (MAC address and video adaptor showed up as changed?! but those are both motherboard devices?!) - so I went back to the shop whence I'd bought the machine and queried it, they didn't believe me(!) and started trying to tell me that a MAC is a unique number, etc., etc... (umm - I know that sort of stuff, guys...) ...whatever happened to that machine was seriously bad news.

So I reinstalled Windows XP.

Now got to put a load of software back on. But not AVG!

I'll mark this one as "resolved" (as soon as I've worked out how!)

best wishes, HJ.