Virus Scan Shutting down laptop

[ArPaNET]

Okay I am trying to help a friend that lives a couple hours away with her computer, It is an Acer laptop, reasonably new, running XP SP2... she said when she runs a virus scan the scan gets to a certain point and shuts down the computer. no other times, just when she runs a virus scan.

I told her to download AVG and scan with that, and if it still shuts down then try Trend Micro... she said that still shuts it down...
she is away from her computer right now but when she gets home I would like to be able to tell her whats wrong...

I searched, and came up with a couple things such as: over heating, bios upgrade needed and possibly a virus.

I was wondering what you guys think it might be, and how to fix it. Ill try to get more details when she gets home.

Edit: okay it is an Acer 5050, I had her try the scan in safe mode, with no luck, installed a temp monitor, and that was reading just fine... the only thing I can think of is to try and upgrade the bios. I have read that these along with toshiba's have problems with the computer not really overheating but telling it is, so it shuts down...

any help would be great thanks

[nihil]

Hi,

Yes, overheating usually causes that, but it would be more of a time based thing, and related to usage rather than an application. Graphics intensive applications may provoke it.

BIOS can cause strange things, but not a virus scan shutdown.

So, I suspect that there is a problem with the files, and I have seen this sort of thing before, only it froze and forced a manual reboot rather than actually shut the box down itself.

1. Run chkdsk, then defragment.
2. Reboot into safe mode.
3. Run the virus scan, but change the scan rules to ignore compressed files.
4. If that works then reboot into normal mode, reset to scan compressed files and scan again.

If that crashes then you will have to search for compressed files and open them individually until you find the corrupted one.
You might look in the system logs to see if there are any clues.

[tfzxyinhao]

I use the Kaspersky Internet Security to scan my computer and appear same circumstances,because the Kaspersky Internet Security kill your key executable where this executable was infection some viruses
So you must copy this executable with other normal computer!
thanks !

[morganlefay]

I had a machine once that would crash on a virus scan...

Ended up being bad memory.

Wasnt there a worm that shut down machines..??

Off to google


MLF

http://www.pchell.com/virus/sasser.shtml

[nihil]

Hmmm,

Yes, a virus scan might be fairly intensive, but it would be rather unusual for it to trigger a shutdown at a particular point in a particular program. However I must give credit to MLF for coming up with that one as it links two possibilities with a single cause?

Say we have a very large file and it is complex(compressed). If the file was corrupt in a certain way it might crash the system, because although modern AV systems generally skip corrupted files, this one would need unpacking first and that is the bit that crashes.

Now, say there is nothing wrong with the file, but it is large and complex? that will put a much heavier demand on RAM and possibly engage corrupted portions of it. In either case the common denominator would be the file.

It might be worth running Memtest86 to test the RAM.

[ArPaNET]

okay im having a real hard time instructing her so I might have to wait till I can get down there and have a look at it myself.

She said she hasn't downloaded anything... Now I know that sounds hard to believe considering your always downloading updates and everything, that she doesn't know about. But, she doesn't use her computer like most people, she gets online does research, uses microsoft office programs (word, exel, etc...) and listens to music that she uploads from her cd's (actually paid for cd's from best buy)

I guess what I am trying to say is that unless the compressed file is an update there should not be any compressed files...

Am I overlooking something? like could there be something that she didn't intentionally download that could be complex enough?

[nihil]

Hi,

I guess she could just run a RAM test in the meantime? Link is here:

http://www.memtest86.com/

Ignore the bits about payment, that's for the comprehensive CD with additional stuff, and the source code shipped to you Just download the free application.

Don't run more than one pass. If it is a RAM problem that crashes an AV then it will either pass first time or fail pretty quickly.

and listens to music that she uploads from her cd's (actually paid for cd's from best buy)

That could be the answer?............... a corrupted upload perhaps? and music files do tend to be quite large. Also, I don't think that music file formats are handled that well in AV products, as they are not a traditional attack vector.

I would assume that she has all her music in a single partition or folder(s). Try telling the AV to ignore that partition or folder, and see if that makes a difference.

Also, get her to go into the BIOS and Windows and turn off all power saving options (yes I know that it is a laptop). There might be some problem with the system thinking that the virus scan is inactivity (no user input) and it tries to hibernate or whatever.

Basically, this behaviour is very unusual so I am scratching around the strange occurrences that I have encountered in the past.

[ArPaNET]

ill tell her to give it a try... its finals week so we are both pretty busy, thanks for all the advice... I will let you know how it goes