Windows 10 VM locking up unRAID 6.2 entirely on installation of Avast AV?


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Hi,

 

I have had some fun problems with my Windows VM since upgrading to UnRAID 6.2

Initially I had to fix problems with stability which seemed to be related to which Machine type it was on (Q35-2.5 instead of i440fx-2.5) and the BIOS type it was using.

Now my Windows VM, after being recreated from scratch, seems stable until I try to install my antivirus of choice, Avast. For some reason, as soon as I run the installer, the VM locks up, I am unable to get onto the web interface for unRAID and the keyboard I use for unRAID doesn't respond to anything either, changing numlock etc. This forces me to hit the reset button on my case or force power cycle the entire system.

 

Any ideas what could be causing this? Please advise what logs etc would you be useful

nova-diagnostics-20161003-1139.zip

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I just had this issue -- previously I had used BitDefender on my VMs but some computers can't use BitDefender so for consistency I decided to switch the VMs to Avast. Completely killed the VM. The only way to fix it was to reset Windows which removed Avast and everything else.

 

Solution is to just not use Avast. BitDefender works fine for me. I've never heard of anyone complaining about Avira either.

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  • 1 month later...

Tried to install Avira 2017 on a new Windows 10 VM yesterday and it killed it, I could get to the login but then login screen would just hang forever. Terrible experience having to spend all the time again to reconfigure it after I just had everything up and running.

Any recommendations for an AV? It needs to be tested recently as it seems also Avira was fine until I tested it.

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a Week ago i replaced my Xen-Server with Unraid-Trail and everything worked good. I'm not sure if it worked "good enough" for 60$, but it worked! Untill yesterday morning, i was setting up a Windows 7 VM, installing all Updates an my all in one installation from Ninite.com (including Avast). This resulted in a complete Lockup of the Unraid-Pc, like you guys described, but it also killed my Router!? So all my devices were kicked from the i-net, i first thought it must be my IPS, but Notebook<>Modem worked. Next thing was the Router, reset still nothing, factory reset still everything locked up. After 1,5 hours i luckily unplugged all network cables, there it started working again, the i put the cable from the unraid machine back in and everything was screwed up again. The only thing that brought unraid back to life was a hard reset. Which resulted in a new parity check (20+ Hours), a Teamspeak-Server Docker that didn't want to start anymore and a broken Windows 7 VM...

 

Today after hours of finding the error and hours to repair the damage done, everything was back working. Except the running parity check and the Windows 7 VM, witch i was etting up a hour ago and guest what? I tried to install avast again and again everything hang, i rushed to the router unplugged the unraid and saved some other systems and users struggling with the lost internet connection...

 

Now i found this thread and i can't believe what the problem is and that there is no hot-fix or at least a warning about that problem when downloading the image? So Lime Tech. wants $$$ for a hypervisor that can only run Windows VMs without antivirus software? Accordingly unraid 6.2 is a release, its not a beta or a testversion, i can't believe the didn't test a Windows VM with a antivirus before pushing the release candidate to the public? Running a Windows OS without a antivirus is just plain stupid, but i guess there are people not installing a antivirus or updates but use unraid and VMs. I'm sorry Greg but your proposition is just naive and you shouldn't recommend such pap! First boot on your Windows VM = install a antivirus (regardless of whether online or offline use)!

The only antivirus you should ever need is common sense.

But is there a other solution than not using unraid? After a week of testing my summary is devastating, the today sold unraid version 6.2 is unable to run Windows VMs proper. If a VM crashes, it crashes your hole system and that does Damage to Dockers and possibly your files/filesystem/drives. And after finding all that by experience, i found this nearly 2 month old thread about the Problem, inside the proper support forum, with no developer involvement??? How did you guys fixed that problem? Are you running the VMs without a antivirus?

 

 

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I believe that most people use  an Anti-Virus in their VM's without any issues.    I know I use Windows Defender in mine and have no issues with it.

 

From what I have seen from other forum posts this seems to be an issue that is specific to Avast.    What Avast might be doing at a low level that upsets a VM I have no idea.    In  theory Anti-Virus software should be running at a high enough level of abstraction that the fact it is a VM is irrelevant, but in the case of Avast this appears not to be true.

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Okay, i am using avast because I've got a license left, but i will try once again with AVG! I'll give unraid one more try, but it is a major problem for me that a VM can hang up a complete system. I never hat that problem with the xen hypervisor and i can't find any similar problem regarding kvm. Is this normal for kvm to completely hang if a VM gets stuck or is this related to the implementation into unraid???

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Okay, i am using avast because I've got a license left, but i will try once again with AVG! I'll give unraid one more try, but it is a major problem for me that a VM can hang up a complete system. I never hat that problem with the xen hypervisor and i can't find any similar problem regarding kvm. Is this normal for kvm to completely hang if a VM gets stuck or is this related to the implementation into unraid???

i think it is something that Avast is doing that is non-standard that is triggering something in a low level in KVM!    UnRAID just uses the standard KVM product so I would expect there to be similar problems on other Linux platforms that use KVM.  In theory a system should never hang because a VM plays up if it is perfectly isolated, but I have found that this is not always the case on many different virtualisation platforms I have tried (e.g. KVM, Xen, VMWare, VirtualBox).
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a Week ago i replaced my Xen-Server with Unraid-Trail and everything worked good. I'm not sure if it worked "good enough" for 60$, but it worked! Untill yesterday morning, i was setting up a Windows 7 VM, installing all Updates an my all in one installation from Ninite.com (including Avast). This resulted in a complete Lockup of the Unraid-Pc, like you guys described, but it also killed my Router!? So all my devices were kicked from the i-net, i first thought it must be my IPS, but Notebook<>Modem worked. Next thing was the Router, reset still nothing, factory reset still everything locked up. After 1,5 hours i luckily unplugged all network cables, there it started working again, the i put the cable from the unraid machine back in and everything was screwed up again. The only thing that brought unraid back to life was a hard reset. Which resulted in a new parity check (20+ Hours), a Teamspeak-Server Docker that didn't want to start anymore and a broken Windows 7 VM...

 

Today after hours of finding the error and hours to repair the damage done, everything was back working. Except the running parity check and the Windows 7 VM, witch i was etting up a hour ago and guest what? I tried to install avast again and again everything hang, i rushed to the router unplugged the unraid and saved some other systems and users struggling with the lost internet connection...

 

Now i found this thread and i can't believe what the problem is and that there is no hot-fix or at least a warning about that problem when downloading the image? So Lime Tech. wants $$$ for a hypervisor that can only run Windows VMs without antivirus software? Accordingly unraid 6.2 is a release, its not a beta or a testversion, i can't believe the didn't test a Windows VM with a antivirus before pushing the release candidate to the public? Running a Windows OS without a antivirus is just plain stupid, but i guess there are people not installing a antivirus or updates but use unraid and VMs. I'm sorry Greg but your proposition is just naive and you shouldn't recommend such pap! First boot on your Windows VM = install a antivirus (regardless of whether online or offline use)!

 

Just an FYI - I am running Trend Micro business worry free anti virus and it is working great on my two gaming VM's. I did try the cheap version of AVG free and it did kill my VM's but I was smart enough to not install it again as I new it was the issue. As far as UNRAID goes, its probably been one of the best 60 dollars I have spent as it is the only hypervisor I have found that will let you pass through a consumer level Nvidia GPU without having to spends thousands of dollars on a Grid card.

 

For a 60 dollar software by Lime Tech, I currently run two gaming VM's, three virtual servers for testing, the UNRAID system, and GPU pass-through works way better than VMware or Hyper-V in my opinion.

 

Trend Micro has a trial version you could try, I have not tried the trial version but it may work for you but it does look to be a different version then the one I am using. If I get time I will create another VM and install the trial version of Trend Micro to see if I have any issues with it.

 

http://shop.trendmicro.com/+try/?utm_source=Brand-US&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=Plus-Try

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Trend Micro has a trial version you could try, I have not tried the trial version but it may work for you but it does look to be a different version then the one I am using. If I get time I will create another VM and install the trial version of Trend Micro to see if I have any issues with it.

 

I just tested the trial version of Trend Micro on my 2nd VM and I had no issues installing it if anyone is still looking for anti virus to use. I am using Windows 10 so I don't know if there is an issue with Win 8 or 7.

 

http://shop.trendmicro.com/+try/?utm_source=Brand-US&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=Plus-Try

 

TrendMicro.PNG.e65bf1ec450afd2007762e8d787558e2.PNG

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The solution is to not install Avast, or somehow ask those idiots at Avast to provide you a way to disable their shitty hypervisor mode before you install their shitty product.

 

Or you could just use the AV product that comes bundled with Windows. You know, the one that isn't half bad, but like all other AV products, isn't half as good as some good old Common Sense? I find that most brand new in-the-wild stuff either isn't going to be detected before it infects you, or isn't going to infect you at all unless you start opening email attachments without looking first. Or start downloading your software from questionable places.

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I was having issues, so I (temporarily?) disabled all scanning engines, but I was using Defender. While it may be one of the best free options, I was being bothered by constant real time scans of frequently accessed and modified files, which led to system slowdown overall. I may decide to back down on that and enable it again some day, if I can bother myself to ignore the scanning engine munching whole cores to itself for minutes at a time throughout the day.

 

Note that I do not consider any other engine to be any less of a burden on system resources. Use or do not use, both with ample caution.

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... I did try the cheap version of AVG free and it did kill my VM's but I was smart enough to not install it again as I new it was the issue. As far as UNRAID goes, its probably been one of the best 60 dollars I have spent as it is the only hypervisor I have found that will let you pass through a consumer level Nvidia GPU without having to spends thousands of dollars on a Grid card. ...

 

Thank you very very much Sir! That saved my day.

 

Since my last post the unraid-pc was running flawless, performance is nice. My Windows 7 VM runs stable what ever i do to it, without a Antivirus though. So lets try kaspersky antivirus and see what happens! (https://trial.s.kaspersky-labs.com/trial/registered/53wbabytgk10sasp61be/kav17.0.0.611de_10845.exe)

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... I did try the cheap version of AVG free and it did kill my VM's but I was smart enough to not install it again as I new it was the issue. As far as UNRAID goes, its probably been one of the best 60 dollars I have spent as it is the only hypervisor I have found that will let you pass through a consumer level Nvidia GPU without having to spends thousands of dollars on a Grid card. ...

 

Thank you very very much Sir! That saved my day.

 

Since my last post the unraid-pc was running flawless, performance is nice. My Windows 7 VM runs stable what ever i do to it, without a Antivirus though. So lets try kaspersky antivirus and see what happens! (https://trial.s.kaspersky-labs.com/trial/registered/53wbabytgk10sasp61be/kav17.0.0.611de_10845.exe)

 

Any luck sir?

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  • 1 month later...

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