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J. Ari Applications can not start
Hello, after updating AVG to the latest version I noticed that some applications does not run, they just quit after starting. Adding those applications as exceptions does the trick. However, since I am a develper of some of those applications I invetigated the issue.
The problem happens when the applications check for a Mutex to see if they are already running. This is a very common pattern as specified here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19147/what-is-the-correct-way-to-create-a-single-instance-application
However, it seems that AVG is delaying the Mutex wait, so when the program does
if (mutex.WaitOne(0, true))
it returns false even if the mutex does not exist and the program thinks it is already running. However doing
if (mutex.WaitOne(1000, true))
works as expected since we introduce a delay.
Please confirm this is a bug in AVG and if you are working on a fix. Please let me know if you need more information.
Regards,
Juanjo
The problem happens when the applications check for a Mutex to see if they are already running. This is a very common pattern as specified here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19147/what-is-the-correct-way-to-create-a-single-instance-application
However, it seems that AVG is delaying the Mutex wait, so when the program does
if (mutex.WaitOne(0, true))
it returns false even if the mutex does not exist and the program thinks it is already running. However doing
if (mutex.WaitOne(1000, true))
works as expected since we introduce a delay.
Please confirm this is a bug in AVG and if you are working on a fix. Please let me know if you need more information.
Regards,
Juanjo
Disabling AVG fixes the problem.
The product is AVG Internet Security 2015.0.6086
Virus Database version: 4392/10222
It's been really hard to track down, as you don't expect something as fundamental as Mutexes to be broken by a third party app. I eventually got all affected customers to send me a list of what processes are running on their machine, and the only thing they all had in common was AVG.
A quick search for "AVG" and "Mutex" returned this result which confirmed the same exact, very specific problem.
I suspect a lot of application vendors are suffering from this problem, only they haven't tracked it back to its source yet.
Leon, Please follow the Komal Sathish Kunmar (AVG Technologies) posting.
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