[julman]

Hello, hope someone can help me. I have described as much as I can below.

The problem seemed to have started when I installed AnVir TaskManager (http://www.anvir.com/taskmanager/); soon after I installed it I seemed to be having problems with my browser (slowed down and links not working – explained more below). I uninstalled it, but it felt like it hadn’t uninstalled very well (for example, didn’t see the last dialogue box saying ‘Uninstalled’).

Some details:
Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP1. Fully updated with all the most recent fixes, etc.
I use Opera and Firefox browsers simultaneously. Both are the most recent versions.
Outlook 2007 SP1

Symptoms:
* When clicking on a link, especially in Opera, the new page will start to open – i.e. I get the blank page with the url on top - but it won’t load until I highlight the url and push Enter; on Firefox it will tell me that the connection has been interrupted and I get a button to ‘Try Again’. In theory this may be a network problem, but it only started happening so much recently and I’m sure it’s related to the overall problem.
* I’ll be browsing with Firefox, have a number of tabs going, and then a page will not load, the circle thing just goes round and round. This often seems to be connected with filling out forms – comments in blogs, stuff like that. This will continue for 5-10 minutes. So I close it. When I try to restart it says:

‘Firefix is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.’

* If I go into Opera, it will also freeze at this point.
* I usually have Outlook running too, and it will freeze too, and I cannot shut it down even via the Task Manager. So I have to shut down and reboot. The PC will eventually reboot by itself but will take a long time (5 minutes+) to do it by itself, sometimes I just power off.
* Other programs do not seem to be affected – e.g. I can open Word or Notepad. (I’m not 100% sure of this, but I think so).

What I have tried so far:
* Reinstall Opera and Firefox. I also deleted the Firefox profile in order to get a completely new one.
* Uninstalled all versions of Java and reinstalled the most recent one
* Ran CCleaner and deleted everything it suggested in the registry.
* Scanned the system with SuperAntiSpyware (nothing was found)
* Manually deleted AnVir registry files that were still there.
* Managed to recreate the crash in Firefox and Opera – this is done by opening a bunch of pages (5-10) and trying to enter comments and such. Even without Outlook open it still crashes. I think the Outlook crash is caused by the initial problem (see error log below).

Information that may be useful:
* This is an error log for the Outlook crash following the scenario described above

Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangXProcB1
Application Name: OUTLOOK.EXE
Application Version: 12.0.6316.5000
Application Timestamp: 4833a470
Hang Signature: 272b
Hang Type: 6208
Waiting on Application Name: firefox.exe
Waiting on Application Version: 1.9.0.3224
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 17417
Additional Hang Signature 1: 4a30939fd73fcff9aa5ed41c0d6c956c
Additional Hang Signature 2: b7d1
Additional Hang Signature 3: 40ad6d81013c24c4d5d44ae2ecb0cc83
Additional Hang Signature 4: 272b
Additional Hang Signature 5: 4a30939fd73fcff9aa5ed41c0d6c956c
Additional Hang Signature 6: b7d1
Additional Hang Signature 7: 40ad6d81013c24c4d5d44ae2ecb0cc83

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 382585542

* I also got Process Explorer (http://www.filehippo.com/download_process_explorer/) and tried to track what was happening. I don’t really understand much of what is in there, but there seemed to be an anomaly with a file called ‘\Device\Afd’. As I was using Firefox, there seemed to be more and more of these building up – and eventually Firefox crashed. If I tried to do ‘Close Handle’ on it, the message was ‘Error opening process: The handle is invalid’. When I looked at the Properties, under the Security tab, there is an ‘Account unknown(S-1-5-5-0-193308)’ indicated, which doesn’t look good to me. I chose ‘Remove’, and closed the dialog box, but when I open it again, the ‘Account unknown’ is still there, with the same number. I tried to shut down the whole Firefox process with Process Explorer, but it couldn’t. In the end, Opera also froze (there were ‘\Device\Afd’ there too), and I had to reboot.

Sorry for the long message, but I hope that gives useful information and someone can help out. I am a moderately experienced user, but this is really the limit of what I can do. Any help and advice will be received on bent knees I really need my browsers to work impeccably for my work.

[julman]

bump

[julman]

Well no one has answered, but in case it helps anyone, here is what I have done since the above.

I reinstalled a free version (from download.com) of AnVir Task Manager. When it started running, it told me that I had one new program in the startup - SuperAntiSpyWare. The thing is, I installed that *after* I had uninstalled AnVir - so my suspicion that it had not uninstalled properly was confirmed...

So far I have tried to recreate the crash but failed. So maybe one solution is to keep AnVir... which I don't really want.

I will try to stop it running (using Autoruns - http://www.filehippo.com/download_autoruns/) and see what happens there. And after that uninstall it again using the uninstaller that comes with AnVir.

Will update later.

[davey1980]

sounds like im also geting same prob. as i posted in new thread, no problem with connection as other programmes connect fine but browsers stop loads like they're blocked. i also have vist home premium and think this is partly the cause or some auto update from microsoft. poss auto port closes? im unsure but also waiting on help :s

[julman]

Well... after disabling AnVir Firefox still hangs but the other programs (Opera and Outlook) don't also hang as they did before.

I'm not sure we have the same problem Davey. Seems to me that it's most likely a problem with Firefox. Another person on the forum seems to have a very similar problem - http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/...ing-after.html

I have the most recent 3.0.5 version, and the version 3.0.4 had the same problem, so I'm going to see if I can download a previous version in case it makes a difference...

At the moment, I'm basically using Opera only - but it still has the annoying thing where sometimes (about half of the time) the links don't work on the first time and I have to either do refresh, or highlight the url and press Enter. This typically happens with forms - such as entering a reply in this thread - I had to reboot before I could post this reply.

It may have something to do to with running scripts (though I'm not really sure what that means)... if I don't start Firefox, then the problem doesn't seem to appear...

[julman]

Well, in the end it doesn't seem to have been a problem with AnVir Task Manager. I uninstalled Zone Alarm and the problem went away. On the other hand, I never had any problem until I installed AnVir Task Manager - so maybe it's a combination of the two.

For the moment I'm surviving on the Vista Firewall, but am going to install Comodo.

[davey1980]

well i use AVAST anti virus and when it hangs i disable it and reload the page.. works fine, nothing wrong with zone alarm pro for me.
i still think its bugs in vista programme