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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Pishaw on July 10, 2012, 07:29:59 PM
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I have two machines, one is dual boot with Win 7 x64 and Win 8 x64. The other is Win 7 x32. All three with Avast Free 7.0.1456. I have noticed over the last several weeks that the Win 7 x64 machine takes a long time to boot, that it 'hangs' on the "Welcome"screen for like two minutes, then goes to the desktop BUT the HDD is busy for another three minutes. So it takes the Win 7 x64 machine like five minutes to become usable. At that point it works normally. I can't pinpoint exactly when but it seems like the machine has booted slow since Avast v. 7.
The dual boot machine is a Dell Studio 1737, and the Win 7 x32 is an older dual core Toshiba with a gig of memory.
The Win 8 and Win 7 x32 machines boot normally, from cold off to ready in less that 60 seconds. After a little Googleing last night, I uninstalled Avast from the Win 7 x64 machine. Guess what it can do now? That's right, it boots from cold in less that 60 seconds. From what I've gathered, this seems to affect Win 7 x64 machines only, but obviously not all of them.
Before we go any further, let me say I have the computer plugged in, I haven't had it in the shower, I haven't hit it with a hammer. I'm fairly literate, and have checked the usual suspects that cause slow booting. Did the uninstall/reinstall of Avast, and still slow boot. But after uninstalling Avast and replacing it with MSE it boots like it should.
I've been using Avast since version 4. I don't like NOT using it, but it conflicts with my machine in some way. But just Win 7 x64. On the same dual boot Dell, Win 8 works fine, so it is Win 7 x64 specific. I hope y'all are able to work this out.
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Hi Pishaw,
I'm just a forum user here.
Maybe try narrow it down a little?
Maybe permanently disable the shields one by one and restart each time to determine which shield is causing it.
I have a feeling it's the file shield...
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I'd suggest to do a scan, maybe malware is running at startup or so.
Also clear your startup programs, and perhaps do a defrag, with Defraggler (http://www.piriform.com/defraggler) or Diskeeper (http://www.condusiv.com/products/diskeeper/) or something like that. (both of those help a lot with slow boot times here)
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Nope. None of that. No malware, no viruses, nothing wrong with the machine. After I removed Avast, it works fine. That kinda narrows it down, right?
And I'm not the only one. I'm seeing EXACTLY the same problem that I had from other people with Win 7 x64.
Look, I've been loyal to Avast for a decade. I've installed it on other peoples computers that I have worked on. I've recommended it to people that ask my opinion. But I'm not going to spend an entire afternoon troubleshooting someone elses software. My problem is fixed. And it's not a cult.
When they figure it out, maybe I'll come back. But the advice I've seen dispensed on this site, by people whose screen name identifies them as an 'Avast! Evangelist', is many times usless and insulting. Much of it seems to be geared towards "what have you done wrong." Things like "uninstall/reinstall it AGAIN." "You must have a virus on you computer." I posted here after working on the problem on my own for almost two weeks. I KNOW there is nothing wrong with my machine, and I KNOW that Avast was the problem, and I KNOW others are having exactly the same problem I had. And I thought I made that clear. I don't want to be told I've done something wrong. This is a company run website, with people posting advice that have the company name in their screen name. Most people would take that as they are representatives of Avast. I do. When the first response is to defend the product, it's not customer service. I have yet to see "we're aware of it and are working HARD on a fix. Hang in there. Here's what to do in the mean time." This seems to be such an obvious response that the fact no one is saying that makes me question the entire operation.
Calling a customer wrong is what I'd expect from a company that sells overpriced devices to rabidly brand-loyal devotees. I expect more from Avast.
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Just FYI, I opened a ticket on this very issue. I requested a fix, not simply instructions to uninstall/reinstall manually what an auto-update caused. Here is the answer I received today:
Dear ---------,
The reinstallation should fix it.
Best Regards
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Hi Pishaw,
I'm not an Avast Evangelist and there has not been an Evangelist response to your thread.
Just calm down a bit, I'm trying to pin point the issue so we can file a bug report and not just say "my avast is slowing down my pc"
I have not come across this issue yet and I have also been with avast for a long time and I have done hundreds of installations as a tech.
There must be a reason why some win7 x64 installations are affected and others are not.
I'm unable to recreate the problem that's why you need to provide the info.
Please try permanently disabling the shields and restart to see which one it is, starting with the file shield.
If none of these are causing it, try disabling auto sandbox...
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Just FYI, I opened a ticket on this very issue. I requested a fix, not simply instructions to uninstall/reinstall manually what an auto-update caused. Here is the answer I received today:
Dear ---------,
The reinstallation should fix it.
Best Regards
Well a clean reinstall is the fix.
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But the advice I've seen dispensed on this site, by people whose screen name identifies them as an 'Avast! Evangelist', is many times usless and insulting. Much of it seems to be geared towards "what have you done wrong."
<snip> I have yet to see "we're aware of it and are working HARD on a fix. Hang in there. Here's what to do in the mean time." This seems to be such an obvious response that the fact no one is saying that makes me question the entire operation.
Sure the Evangelists could offer you help, but you insulted us in your post for no reason at all since we hadn't had a chance to even post. We do not blame users or insult them; in fact we try to help them in any way possible.
As for your second comment after the "snip," you obviously haven't read all the threads because there have been plenty of posts where the Avast Team and Evangelists have stated that they are working on a fix, or the problem will be fixed with the next update or release, etc.
Your post comes across as being very defensive yet we are here to help if you want it. There are other suggestions I can offer to assist you, but until you are ready to accept help, I cannot offer it and be insulted at the same time.
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I've been happily running Win7 X64 on my laptop now and haven't had a single problem where Avast! was involved. So it does seem to affect only a few machines.
As suggested twice, *do* try a reinstall, even if you don't want to/don't think that will solve it. That's the fix they gave you. As SafeSurf said, people around here are willing to help you, and so they try to do, but if you don't accept it...
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Have today said goodbye to Avast IS even though I have 6 months usage remaining. This programme has been a pain since update from version 6. Slow boot time was driving me to distraction and clean install (this appears to be the answer for all ills) did NOT SOLVE THE ISSUE. Have temporarily loaded MS security and boot time is back to 60 seconds. Avast is by far the worst anti virus programme I have used.
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OK. Hold on, everyone. I didn't call any of you out by name, and I'm not saying any of the 'Avast Evangelists' were posting insulting comments or advice here. But I've read many of the threads here the last few days, and I have seen it. So have you. The solution to everything can't ALWAYS be uninstall/reinstall/ EVERY time, can it? C'mon now.
I get how hard this sort of thing is. You've got people that don't have their computers plugged in saying Avast made their screen go black. And they seem to think you did it, on purpose. I understand how difficult it is to deal with the general public, I really do. It is worth pointing out that y'all handle yourselves largely very professionally, more so than the average person would in the same context.
I think you'd have to admit there are more problems than normal with release 7.0.1456. I've seen a couple of threads on the Avast site about the same issue I have, and many more other places. And I see a lot of people having issues with Outlook, for example. Now it's understandable if there was a conflict with, like, Zork. But Outlook? Office is almost universal. If there's a conflict with Outlook, it's a major problem. Right?
Also, I didn't come here with questions. I did my own troubleshoot/bootscan/uninstall/reinstall/troubleshoot some more/uninstall some more before I got here. I figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. I'm OK. I just wanted to post exactly the problem I was having so that A) It was brought to your attention, and B) If anyone was wondering why it took their machine so long to boot lately, they might say "Yo, that's the same thing I have."
At any rate, thank you for your effort. I'll keep checking back for the next update.
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I'm on a win7 x64 machine and the only solution that works for me is to disable 'reputation services'.
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Have today said goodbye to Avast IS even though I have 6 months usage remaining. This programme has been a pain since update from version 6. Slow boot time was driving me to distraction and clean install (this appears to be the answer for all ills) did NOT SOLVE THE ISSUE. Have temporarily loaded MS security and boot time is back to 60 seconds. Avast is by far the worst anti virus programme I have used.
Well then, it was worth trying wasn't it? Now you can at least tell us that that didn't solve it, instead of coming in later saying "Oh heck that did indeed solve it."
OK. Hold on, everyone. I didn't call any of you out by name, and I'm not saying any of the 'Avast Evangelists' were posting insulting comments or advice here. But I've read many of the threads here the last few days, and I have seen it. So have you. The solution to everything can't ALWAYS be uninstall/reinstall/ EVERY time, can it? C'mon now.
A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P
I get how hard this sort of thing is. You've got people that don't have their computers plugged in saying Avast made their screen go black. And they seem to think you did it, on purpose. I understand how difficult it is to deal with the general public, I really do. It is worth pointing out that y'all handle yourselves largely very professionally, more so than the average person would in the same context.
There is no cure for idiots and people who don't investigate stuff before asking stuff; it's just the way it is, sorry :(
I think you'd have to admit there are more problems than normal with release 7.0.1456. I've seen a couple of threads on the Avast site about the same issue I have, and many more other places. And I see a lot of people having issues with Outlook, for example. Now it's understandable if there was a conflict with, like, Zork. But Outlook? Office is almost universal. If there's a conflict with Outlook, it's a major problem. Right?
I have no idea, Avast has always been working fine for me. Conflicting with a big program indeed can be a problem.
Also, I didn't come here with questions. I did my own troubleshoot/bootscan/uninstall/reinstall/troubleshoot some more/uninstall some more before I got here. I figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. I'm OK. I just wanted to post exactly the problem I was having so that A) It was brought to your attention, and B) If anyone was wondering why it took their machine so long to boot lately, they might say "Yo, that's the same thing I have."
That's good, thank you for that. If everybody would research a little more (and I"m not pointing fingers) then issues would be solved earlier; the Avast! team can't troubleshoot issues with just "Oh my computer is booting slow, how do I fix this?", they could do much more with "My computer boots slow because process xxx is using xxx CPU usage at startup" or so.
At any rate, thank you for your effort. I'll keep checking back for the next update.
I'm sorry for the issues that have been occuring on your system, and I hope you'll consider recommending Avast again.
Sorry for making this thread a mess by the way.
marziano_mork: Is that a service in Windows, or a setting in Avast?
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A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P
Corruupt files/config from where? I updated Avast! IS using the prompt in the UI. Duh, apparently that was user mistake #1 because that is when the problems started. Immediately, the first reboot after the install (which I was of course prompted to do) resulted in the Windows Startup Screen hanging so long that I thought Windows was hosed. Instead of panicking, I waited, and waited and waited...for minutes (does it matter if its 3, 4 or 5?). Then finally, a complete start up.
Now I'm told the "fix" is to uninstall all previous versions of Avast! using a combination of some tool and the Windows uninstaller (apparently I need to run something for each previous version I have upgraded from in the past 2 years? how is that done?). Then I install, what most likely is the same thing that the auto-upgrade installed (minus the corruption?). And hopefully at that point I have nothing broken. Of course if something is broken, then it must be user mistake #2 and I should perform the procedure again.
Since the Avast! update I have had a horrible boot time. And on one occasion during boot I received a message saying Windows Explorer failed! Luckily, Windows Explorer tried to restart itself and was successful. On two other occasions FF13 could not be used while Avast! was running. IE was fine, but not FF - which would only run in "safe mode".
There will never be a REAL fix to this will there? You know, one where you update in the exact method that the Software's provider has given to you and it actually results in a clean install with no corruption, etc? Nope, my only recourse is to try following some instructions to be sure I wipe out everything from previous versions in the correct manner and then run the complete new install and hope my license still works and I didn't break anything; because Lord knows it surely isn't the software's fault.
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A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P
Corruupt files/config from where? I updated Avast! IS using the prompt in the UI. Duh, apparently that was user mistake #1 because that is when the problems started. Immediately, the first reboot after the install (which I was of course prompted to do) resulted in the Windows Startup Screen hanging so long that I thought Windows was hosed. Instead of panicking, I waited, and waited and waited...for minutes (does it matter if its 3, 4 or 5?). Then finally, a complete start up.
Now I'm told the "fix" is to uninstall all previous versions of Avast! using a combination of some tool and the Windows uninstaller (apparently I need to run something for each previous version I have upgraded from in the past 2 years? how is that done?). Then I install, what most likely is the same thing that the auto-upgrade installed (minus the corruption?). And hopefully at that point I have nothing broken. Of course if something is broken, then it must be user mistake #2 and I should perform the procedure again.
Since the Avast! update I have had a horrible boot time. And on one occasion during boot I received a message saying Windows Explorer failed! Luckily, Windows Explorer tried to restart itself and was successful. On two other occasions FF13 could not be used while Avast! was running. IE was fine, but not FF - which would only run in "safe mode".
There will never be a REAL fix to this will there? You know, one where you update in the exact method that the Software's provider has given to you and it actually results in a clean install with no corruption, etc? Nope, my only recourse is to try following some instructions to be sure I wipe out everything from previous versions in the correct manner and then run the complete new install and hope my license still works and I didn't break anything; because Lord knows it surely isn't the software's fault.
Updates by far aren't that smooth as fresh installs. Things may screw up. I've seen this happen a crapton of times with SMF, the stuff suddenly breaks after an update.
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@ Yoshi2889
+1
I have found that whenever Avast! moves from version 4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 7, a complete removal of the old version is best done before install of the new. This has resulted in smooth and error-free installs of the new in almost all cases. Be sure to have access to your license beforehand if paid.
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Yoshi2889:
'Reputation services' is a new Avast 7 service ( see 'Cloud Services' menu ) .
It definitely slowed down my system.
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Yoshi2889:
'Reputation services' is a new Avast 7 service ( see 'Cloud Services' menu ) .
It definitely slowed down my system.
It doesn't slow down any of my systems at all. I've got four systems running Avast!, none of them suffer from any slowdown.
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OK. Hold on, everyone. I didn't call any of you out by name, and I'm not saying any of the 'Avast Evangelists' were posting insulting comments or advice here. But I've read many of the threads here the last few days, and I have seen it. So have you. The solution to everything can't ALWAYS be uninstall/reinstall/ EVERY time, can it? C'mon now.
I get how hard this sort of thing is. You've got people that don't have their computers plugged in saying Avast made their screen go black. And they seem to think you did it, on purpose. I understand how difficult it is to deal with the general public, I really do. It is worth pointing out that y'all handle yourselves largely very professionally, more so than the average person would in the same context.
I think you'd have to admit there are more problems than normal with release 7.0.1456. I've seen a couple of threads on the Avast site about the same issue I have, and many more other places. And I see a lot of people having issues with Outlook, for example. Now it's understandable if there was a conflict with, like, Zork. But Outlook? Office is almost universal. If there's a conflict with Outlook, it's a major problem. Right?
Also, I didn't come here with questions. I did my own troubleshoot/bootscan/uninstall/reinstall/troubleshoot some more/uninstall some more before I got here. I figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. I'm OK. I just wanted to post exactly the problem I was having so that A) It was brought to your attention, and B) If anyone was wondering why it took their machine so long to boot lately, they might say "Yo, that's the same thing I have."
At any rate, thank you for your effort. I'll keep checking back for the next update.
Actually I'm going to say it. "Yo, that's the same thing I have." I'm running Windows 7 64bit and my boot time has tripled since upgrading to Avast 7. Like you I did the uninstall/reinstall and it didn't work either. Once my system is fully booted up I don't have any problem with it nor is there any slow down or sluggishness. Only a much longer boot up since installing Avast 7. I will continue to use Avast. Not sure if the problem lies with Avast 7 or with Windows 7 64bit. But I see the problem too. I haven't reported it until now because like your experience nothing suggested in this forum has worked. Good luck.
Bob
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Hi!
I am facing the same problem: I bought avast Internet Security and now the boot time of my computer is much longer!
I have too Windows 7 - 64 bits (sp 1)
I am thinking in asking for a refund, any suggestions? Thanks!
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I just want to start off by saying that Avast 7 is what is causing the slow start-up problem that many people are reporting. Like so many others in this thread, yes, I have already spent way more time than anyone should have to troubleshooting this problem including multiple clean installs. I have, however, found what the exact issue is within Avast that causes the slow start-up.
The Cause of the Problem:
(short version)
It's the File System Real-Time Shield, more specifically the "Scan programs when executing" option in its expert settings. Which means when windows first starts up and is launching all of the start-up programs that Avast feels the need to, and Win7 x64 seems to totally okay with letting it, scan every single one of them, hog a bunch of the HDD I/O in the process, and create a huge bottleneck system.
(long version)
The reason for the 2 minute wait at the welcome screen and the following 3 minute wait on the desktop is because as soon as you submit you password to log into your computer the winlogin.exe process is started, along with several others that are needed to get the desktop environment and other system stuff going. Avast is apparently already running at this point and the 2 minute wait is that time it is taking it to scan all of those processes. It then takes avast the next 3 minute wait to scan all of the others process that run at start-up. It scans these because of the "Scan programs when executing" option in the expert settings of the File System Real-time Shield. The long wait is because Avast wants to scan these process the best it can according to the heuristics and settings it has assigned to the File System Real-Time Shield and to meet this demand, it takes a bunch of the disk I/O. This means that Avast can scan more quickly, but as more disk I/O is taken by Avast, the slower processes get read from the disk and executed.
The Solution:
Well, short of turning the option off every time you shut the computer down and then back on after you start it up or just dealing with the slow start-up, I don't really have one. Sorry. While I'd love to say that it's Win7 x64's fault for not having the OS better handle this kind of HDD hogging, it really is the fault of Avast. I'm hoping, for their sake, that Avast's silence about the issue is because they are working on it and just haven't gotten to a point where they are ready to make a statement about it, and not because they're ignoring it.
Note: Please, if you are booting off of a SSD (HDD RAID setups may also apply to this case), don't post a reply saying that your computer isn't having any slow start-up issues. When booting from a SSD, at least in my experience, this issue is hardly noticeable since, well, SSD's have way higher transfer rates. And if you are running Win7 x64 off of a non-RAID HDD setup and you aren't having slow start-up issues, it would be very helpful if you gave your system specs and/or a list of either common software that's not installed on your computer or uncommon software that is installed, as this will help narrow down what Avast is conflicting with.
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turning the option "Scan programs when executing" did not work for me. Still getting long boot times. I may need to deinstall/reinstall as this seems to be the only way to fix many issues with Avast 7.0.1466
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Just to report that since I have installed .1473 from the Gui update I no longer experience the slow boot mentioned in this thread. Hopefully it will remain like this in the future (I had .1466 working ok for a while until this issue suddenly appeared).