I keep making headway regarding outstanding problems with my migration to Vista.  It appears that I’ve overcome the problem with EQ2Map Updater. 

• Apparently, some of the files in the map directory for EQ2Maps (E.G.: C:\Program Files (x86)\Sony\EverQuest II\UI\EQ2MAP) are/became read only.  I removed the read only property
• and then EQ2Map Update stopped freezing and generated a big ugly error message.  I’d paste it here, but I’ve not been able to re-create it.  I made the error message go away by stopping my anti-virus program, Avast, which also seems to be having some problems with Vista (see below)

The odd thing is this: I turned on Avast again, and EQ2Maps still works.  I’m puzzled by this behavior.  I like Avast: it has been a great AV program under Windows XP X64, and I expected great things from it under Vista based on their website.   But what I’m seeing is very odd.

I disabled Avast’s Web Shield a couple of days ago when I noticed some websites weren’t loading.  There are some postings in Avast’s forum about this behaviour, but no real responses thus far.   To further confuse matters, I re-enabled Web Shield earlier today, thinking that perhaps the autotuning correction I made yesterday might have an impact on Avast’s behavior.  Sure enough, the websites that were consistently failing with WebShield previously were working fine now WebShield enabled and autotuning turned off.

I’m going to try rebooting.  If everything still works, I’ll assume there is some voodoo taking place involving Avast WebShield, Vista’s autotuning, and strange evil spirits…