freeze

[jwall]

What exactly does it mean, "freeze"?
You say the computer is frozen, but you also say that avast ui process uses a lot of CPU - which you could hardly find out if the computer was really frozen... So how is that? Can you start other programs when it happens? Can you move the mouse cursor?

No.

[tbessie]

No avast is designed as a resident antivirus as is MSE, and they both have low level drivers which will be running even when you disable the main protection.

[ snippage ]

Okay - as mentioned, I'd assumed that if I turned off Avast's live scanning, that would make MSE (or any other live scanning AV protection) not conflict with Avast.  Oh well, guess I was wrong about that.

I did a little research to check on possible conflicts, and some folks had stated that as long as live scanning was turned off in Avast, I could safely run MSE as well.  And others had said what you said above.

Since moving to Windows 7, I've generally just used MSE, as it was the easiest; I have 3 active licenses for  Avast 4 (hadn't moved to 5 due to all the problems people were having with it).

So Avast 6 is less resource-using than MSE?  Better at catching malware?

- Tim

[DavidR]

I can only go by other peoples experience on resource use in these forums.

Detection rates depending on which set of results you view will give different figures so it isn't clear. However you also have to do a direct comparison on the various shields in both and which better meets your needs. One area that avast excels is the Web Shiled and Network Shields and I don't believe MSE covers that at all or scans email or P2P or IM traffic, etc...

[Asyn]

So Avast 6 is less resource-using than MSE?  Better at catching malware?

Yes.