BUG: Excessive Disc Activity/Access

I really like the program but …

CAV (both 1.1(?) and beta 2) causes excessive disc activity when I run certain programs such as Sidekick99, Thunderbird, Notepad, MSHearts, and others. As long as these programs are active the disc access starts slowly and eventually the disc begins to thrash and only stops thrashing when I close these programs. This does not happen with all programs.
Also, some windows and/or programs close automatically.
The OS’s are WinXP pro - sp1 & sp2.

Removing CAV does not alter the situation - the damage is done. Whatever settings CAV changed/affected, they are now permanent. The only recourse is to re-install the OS, which I have done 2 times now. At first I thought the problem was caused by a virus. I then thought that maybe it was a hardware fault. Doing all the requisite checks and after carefully monitoring the program re-installations I have localized the fault to CAV.

Has this been reported before? Is there a fix? I hope so, 'cause I really like the program.

I could forward you some of the output from FileMon if I hear from you soon enough. I’ll be re-re-reinstalling XP shortly (without CAV…)

Thanks,
Fred P

This hasn’t been reported before as far as I know, however the only way to locate the problem is with a troubleshoot log produced by comodo.

Personally I know you have done checks but this really sounds like a Drive failure in progress to me.

HI pfred,
The hards disk uses/interaction may increase if you install any AntiVirus with on-access scanner/real time monitor. This is because, it monitors disk for any kind of changes in files or file’s execution. But, if you two AntiVirus or AntiSpyware(with Realtime monitor), the disk access will be much more due to multiple scanning of same file by each product.

regards
Kishor

Hi guys,

Unfortunately it was a bug attack (virus) that was not detected by COMODO ver. 1.? nor ver 2 beta, called EXPIRO.C, I presume a variant of EXPIRO.A
ref: Virus:W32/Expiro.A | F-Secure Labs

It constantly traverses all disks to infect every exe file it finds and that is why there is constant disc access. So if you have more than one program running the disc starts motorboating… In the end the system becomes almost unusable. Kind of a stupid virus - but very harmful. The bug was finally detected by AVG Free.

To see a record of the actual disk access (using FileMon.exe from SysInternals) take a peek at: http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=10487

I backed up my system to DVD’s so I have copies (800 +) of the infected files, if anyone is interested. Luckily none of my data files were affected.

Thanks for looking at this.
pfred

Hi again,

I forgot to apologize for blaming COMODO for my problems. It is not the program that was at fault. The program itself was infected by the virus.

Fred