Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: dor123 on May 12, 2013, 07:32:04 PM
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Recently, Avast 8 Free began to considerably slowing down the system, to the point that it took 3:00-4:00 mins to start up (According to Soluto).
I tryed to reinstall Avast, not helped. Tryed to uninstall all shields, except the File System shields, and this solved the problem for only a brief amount of time, before my system had once again took about 2:55 mins to start up and Avast took 77 secs to load (According to Soluto), despite only the File system shield installed.
How to solve this problem?
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Recently, Avast 8 Free began to considerably slowing down the system, to the point that it took 3:00-4:00 mins to start up (According to Soluto).
I tryed to reinstall Avast, not helped. Tryed to uninstall all shields, except the File System shields, and this solved the problem for only a brief amount of time, before my system had once again took about 2:55 mins to start up and Avast took 77 secs to load (According to Soluto), despite only the File system shield installed.
How to solve this problem?
Make a clean install with the latest version, and see if there's any changes.
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Recently, Avast 8 Free began to considerably slowing down the system, to the point that it took 3:00-4:00 mins to start up (According to Soluto).
I tryed to reinstall Avast, not helped. Tryed to uninstall all shields, except the File System shields, and this solved the problem for only a brief amount of time, before my system had once again took about 2:55 mins to start up and Avast took 77 secs to load (According to Soluto), despite only the File system shield installed.
How to solve this problem?
Try a Selective Startup. It only loads system services, and startup items.
Go to Start and type msconfig in the search box. Hit enter.
Under the General tab, check selective startup.
Go to the Startup tab, and see if there are any programs you can remove from the Startup menu.
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Make a clean install with the latest version, and see if there's any changes.
When I reinstalled Avast 8, I did a clean install with the lastest version (All shields installed), didn't help.
Try a Selective Startup. It only loads system services, and startup items.
Go to Start and type msconfig in the search box. Hit enter.
Under the General tab, check selective startup.
Go to the Startup tab, and see if there are any programs you can remove from the Startup menu.
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This willn't help, as Avast is the cause of the long running time according to Soluto, so the problem is with Avast itself.
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Avast is just getting so bloated I think we just have to get used to the slowness at boot up. My computer is very sluggish at every boot up for about 2 or 3 minutes because of Avast. And yes I have the latest version of Avast 8 and it didn't improve anything. I have used Avast for years going back to version 4. The older versions never bogged my system down. Avast is just getting too bloated. I have an AMD Phenom II CPU at 3.84ghz, 8gb of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory at 1600mhz, a Radeon HD7850 GPU, and I'm running Windows 7 64bit. There is no way my system should be slow at startup. Avast 8 just hogs the resources at boot up. I have even run an msconfig and start up with the bare minimum. I haven't found a way yet to stop Avast from doing this.
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You guys must have crappy system specs or way too much stuff loaded on start up. From a cold start-to login screen- desktop = 45 seconds. A good defrag and boot defrag with Auslogics Pro works great. Soluto will always show any antivirus is slowing up your boot time. Try AVG, Norton, Bitdefefender, Panda, Kaspersky and you will get the same results. Most of you are mistaken but the topic "bloat". Bloat does not mean it drags your system. Bloat is adding tons of extras into a product that is unneeded. Such as Norton360. The only think Avast actually added with a software updater. But that is actually security related due to vulnerabilities in today's software. Especially Java. I am a Bitdefender fan an they even have a software updater. Avast can be fine tuned right down the the install. Only install what you want. Its that easy.
Dell XPS Laptop:
Core i5
8 GB of Ram
1 TB HDD
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Avast is just getting so bloated I think we just have to get used to the slowness at boot up. My computer is very sluggish at every boot up for about 2 or 3 minutes because of Avast. And yes I have the latest version of Avast 8 and it didn't improve anything. I have used Avast for years going back to version 4. The older versions never bogged my system down. Avast is just getting too bloated. I have an AMD Phenom II CPU at 3.84ghz, 8gb of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory at 1600mhz, a Radeon HD7850 GPU, and I'm running Windows 7 64bit. There is no way my system should be slow at startup. Avast 8 just hogs the resources at boot up. I have even run an msconfig and start up with the bare minimum. I haven't found a way yet to stop Avast from doing this.
I don't know what the problem is, but I know it's not Avast.
From power on to the Windows starting screen: 35 seconds
From the Windows starting screen to the logon screen: 20 seconds
From the logon screen to Windows running: 10 seconds
I only have two startup programs. Avast and Windows. Avast is first. If you have Windows booting first, I would guess that something is delaying Avast startup.
Do you have this enabled in Avast"
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Try this:
1. Reboot 3 times. After each boot wait 5 min then reboot
2. After the 3rd reboot wait 5 min then open "cmd"
3. Copy and paste this "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks"
4. Hit enter after pasting it. Open up task manager and be sure the defrag.exe is running. (It may take a min or 2)
5. This will tell Windows to defrag and optimize the bootup according to the prefetch data
6. Reboot
7. Defrag
8. Reboot
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Here is a complete list for the Windows 7 Defrag Switches:
1. Process Idle Tasks: Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
2. Defrag Boot Files : Defrag /b C:
3. Defrag Options: Defrag
4. List of commands:
• /A - Perform analysis on the specified volumes.
• /B - Boot optimization to defrags the boot sector of the boot volume (ex: Windows drive). This will not work on a SSD.
• /C - Perform the operation on all volumes.
• /E - Perform the operation on all volumes except those specified.
• /F - Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.
• /H - Run the operation at normal priority (default is low).
• /M - Run the operation on each volume in parallel in the background.
• /R - Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).
• /T - Track an operation already in progress on the specified volume.
• /U - Print the progress of the operation on the screen.
• /V - Print verbose output containing the fragmentation statistics.
• /X - Perform free space consolidation on the specified volumes.
5. Best Performance: Defrag C: /H /U /V
6. defrag c: -b
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Avast is just getting so bloated I think we just have to get used to the slowness at boot up. My computer is very sluggish at every boot up for about 2 or 3 minutes because of Avast. And yes I have the latest version of Avast 8 and it didn't improve anything. I have used Avast for years going back to version 4. The older versions never bogged my system down. Avast is just getting too bloated. I have an AMD Phenom II CPU at 3.84ghz, 8gb of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory at 1600mhz, a Radeon HD7850 GPU, and I'm running Windows 7 64bit. There is no way my system should be slow at startup. Avast 8 just hogs the resources at boot up. I have even run an msconfig and start up with the bare minimum. I haven't found a way yet to stop Avast from doing this.
I don't know what the problem is, but I know it's not Avast.
From power on to the Windows starting screen: 35 seconds
From the Windows starting screen to the logon screen: 20 seconds
From the logon screen to Windows running: 10 seconds
I only have two startup programs. Avast and Windows. Avast is first. If you have Windows booting first, I would guess that something is delaying Avast startup.
Do you have this enabled in Avast"
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My troubleshooting settings status in my avast 8:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ngdJSUTFEPI/UZCBfqjIe8I/AAAAAAAABIo/VJvCWI6tGFE/s800/Troubleshooting%2520settings%2520status%2520in%2520my%2520Avast%25208.jpg)
Try this:
1. Reboot 3 times. After each boot wait 5 min then reboot
2. After the 3rd reboot wait 5 min then open "cmd"
3. Copy and paste this "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks"
4. Hit enter after pasting it. Open up task manager and be sure the defrag.exe is running. (It may take a min or 2)
5. This will tell Windows to defrag and optimize the bootup according to the prefetch data
6. Reboot
7. Defrag
8. Reboot
You means defrag the system files (Page file, metadata, etc...)?
I do this every several times with my PerfectDisk 12.5 (Offline defrag). Not solves the problem.
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Try this:
1. Reboot 3 times. After each boot wait 5 min then reboot
2. After the 3rd reboot wait 5 min then open "cmd"
3. Copy and paste this "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks"
4. Hit enter after pasting it. Open up task manager and be sure the defrag.exe is running. (It may take a min or 2)
5. This will tell Windows to defrag and optimize the bootup according to the prefetch data
6. Reboot
7. Defrag
8. Reboot
Here is a complete list for the Windows 7 Defrag Switches:
1. Process Idle Tasks: Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
2. Defrag Boot Files : Defrag /b C:
3. Defrag Options: Defrag
4. List of commands:
• /A - Perform analysis on the specified volumes.
• /B - Boot optimization to defrags the boot sector of the boot volume (ex: Windows drive). This will not work on a SSD.
• /C - Perform the operation on all volumes.
• /E - Perform the operation on all volumes except those specified.
• /F - Forces defragmentation of the volume when free space is low.
• /H - Run the operation at normal priority (default is low).
• /M - Run the operation on each volume in parallel in the background.
• /R - Performs partial defragmentation (default). Attempts to consolidate only fragments smaller than 64 megabytes (MB).
• /T - Track an operation already in progress on the specified volume.
• /U - Print the progress of the operation on the screen.
• /V - Print verbose output containing the fragmentation statistics.
• /X - Perform free space consolidation on the specified volumes.
5. Best Performance: Defrag C: /H /U /V
6. defrag c: -b
I did Defrag C: /H /U /V /B , rebooted my computer, and this seems to solve this problem for now (Soluto says 2:08 mins boot-up time, and only 15 secs for Avast start-up).
Is the "Offline Defrag" option in Perfectdisk 12.5, does the same actions?
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You don't need a 3rd party defragger when Windows 7 Defragger is just fine.
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I have the exact same problem and i can tell you for sure that's Avast's fault. Or, to be precise, it's the updater's fault: once the boot has ended the updater starts and for some unknown reason it absolutely trashes the hdd - in, usually, over 2 minutes it manages to make more than 40,000 I/O Reads and over 20,000 I/O Writes. It uses the hdd so much that the entire OS (XP SP3 in my case) is absolutely frozen - nothing moves, nothing works (you can't even open the Task Manager).
No, it's not a bad config, i run a bare bones install of Avast - i disabled WebRep since i've discovered that most of its flags are obsolete and if there is a threat the Web Shield will kick in, the Software Updater and 2 other shields. No. it's not a XP fault - i have just the internet connection and the Opera browser in the autostart and i never have more than 18 processes running (15 at this moment).
No this is clearly caused by a bad coding in the updater. And i can even point when it has started - with the V7. But it has got worse and worse with every new version. At this moment it's so bad that i'm thinking of dumping Avast.
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You don't need a 3rd party defragger when Windows 7 Defragger is just fine.
Perfectdisk is better than Windows 7 build in defragger. It haven't the limitations that Windows defragger have.
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You don't need a 3rd party defragger when Windows 7 Defragger is just fine.
Perfectdisk is better than Windows 7 build in defragger. It haven't the limitations that Windows defragger have.
You obviously don't know the power of Windows 7 Defragger. PD also is constantly running on the back round and that's absurd.
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I have the exact same problem and i can tell you for sure that's Avast's fault. Or, to be precise, it's the updater's fault: once the boot has ended the updater starts and for some unknown reason it absolutely trashes the hdd - in, usually, over 2 minutes it manages to make more than 40,000 I/O Reads and over 20,000 I/O Writes. It uses the hdd so much that the entire OS (XP SP3 in my case) is absolutely frozen - nothing moves, nothing works (you can't even open the Task Manager).
No, it's not a bad config, i run a bare bones install of Avast - i disabled WebRep since i've discovered that most of its flags are obsolete and if there is a threat the Web Shield will kick in, the Software Updater and 2 other shields. No. it's not a XP fault - i have just the internet connection and the Opera browser in the autostart and i never have more than 18 processes running (15 at this moment).
No this is clearly caused by a bad coding in the updater. And i can even point when it has started - with the V7. But it has got worse and worse with every new version. At this moment it's so bad that i'm thinking of dumping Avast.
You are absolutely right. And a note to Aventador. Please reread my post above. I do not have a slow system or numerous items starting upon boot as you suggest. The problem did start with Avast 7 and has gotten worse with each release. I also know what the word bloat means and it's exactly what's happening to Avast. When the only things that change on my computer is the versions of Avast I know the problem lies there. I stopped using AVG years ago because it got too slow and bloated. Just like Avast 8.
Just for grins I uninstalled Avast 8 today. Installed MSE and the boot up slowdowns are gone. I went back to Avast 8 because I trust Avast a bit better than I do Microsoft. But I would like the speed of my old Avast back again.
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I also want to add that my boot up time from cold and dark to full desktop is also under a minute. What I am gripping about are the 2 to 3 minutes after that when I can't use my computer because Avast is hogging it so much it slows to a crawl. After this 2 to 3 minutes then my computer runs extremely fast as it should. See I too can brag about my boot up times.
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I also want to add that my boot up time from cold and dark to full desktop is also under a minute. What I am gripping about are the 2 to 3 minutes after that when I can't use my computer because Avast is hogging it so much it slows to a crawl. After this 2 to 3 minutes then my computer runs extremely fast as it should. See I too can brag about my boot up times.
The problem could be with Avast, but it's not affecting everyone. If it was bloat, shouldn't everyone experience the same thing?
Try turning Software Updater off, and see if that solves the problem.
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I also want to add that my boot up time from cold and dark to full desktop is also under a minute. What I am gripping about are the 2 to 3 minutes after that when I can't use my computer because Avast is hogging it so much it slows to a crawl. After this 2 to 3 minutes then my computer runs extremely fast as it should. See I too can brag about my boot up times.
The problem could be with Avast, but it's not affecting everyone. If it was bloat, shouldn't everyone experience the same thing?
Try turning Software Updater off, and see if that solves the problem.
It's either a scan or the VBS update process.
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You can also have Avast load only after other services are loaded under settings. Seems to me like someone is complaining that after they boot up Avast is slowing there system down. Could be a bandwidth issue which is completely unrelated to Avast. I am on a 20MB connection so I never notice any bandwidth problems.
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You are missing something, the first step to diagnosing this problem is to try to replicate it outside of the initial system boot.
If you stop the avast antivirus service and then start it do you experience the same slow down?
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You are missing something, the first step to diagnosing this problem is to try to replicate it outside of the initial system boot.
If you stop the avast antivirus service and then start it do you experience the same slow down?
Best thing to do is uninstall Avast and go from there. Reboot several times waiting about 5 min between each boot. See how it goes. Then install Avast. But I agree with you. Miost likely its a software conflict. I only have 8 start up items listed under my start up items in msconfig.
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Thanks all for the suggestions. I already have software updater disabled. Went to add/remove programs and did it this way. I have a 12MB internet connection. It's not the internet speed that bogs my system down after boot up. Avast is doing something that I haven't yet figured out. My whole computer becomes unresponsive for 2 to 3 minutes. Avast is hogging my hdd during this time. Like I said yesterday when I uninstalled Avast 8 and tried MSE the problem went away. I went back to Avast 8 and the problem returned. I like Avast the best so I stick with it. After the 2 to 3 minute lag Avast 8 settles down and my computer is fast and back to normal until the next reboot. I would like to know what Avast is doing during this lag time and see if I can put a stop to it. But it's not my computer and it's definitely not my internet connection. I did try the settings within Avast that Aventador suggested and it made no difference. I wish I could find the old post here from about a month ago. There were a few other people that were complaining about the same thing. Someone had a script or something similar that he used that solved the problem. I should have paid closer attention to that post but at the time the lag wasn't bothering me as bad as it is now. To me it has to be with Avast since the lag went away when I uninstalled Avast and used MSE. I guess for now I'll just live with it and go get a snack or a drink of water when I boot up.
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The only thing Avast does at login is update the data base like any other antivirus does. Unless you have a scheduled scan set up. It could also be a software conflict of something that's running in the background. But only you know what is running on your pc. You can add exclusions into Avast. Exactly how many programs do you have on startup? How many items in your system tray? I only have 6. Avast being one of them and my Google Drive.
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I guess for now I'll just live with it and go get a snack or a drink of water when I boot up.
good idea, ignore my previous post and live with the problem.
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I guess for now I'll just live with it and go get a snack or a drink of water when I boot up.
good idea, ignore my previous post and live with the problem.
This provoking post wasn't really needed. :o
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I guess for now I'll just live with it and go get a snack or a drink of water when I boot up.
good idea, ignore my previous post and live with the problem.
This provoking post wasn't really needed. :o
I suppose you're right...i just find this kind of thing annoying. If we could have resolved the issue we would be helping him and whoever may also be having the exact same issue but instead hes just going to live with it.
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I've used Soluto when I was with Windows 7.
I got inconsistent results and an attribution of all the time to the avast! drivers/services load.
The support of the product was dropped somehow. It's not compatible with Windows 8 and I cannot test it anymore.
It was a good program that did not come out of the "beta" stage if you can understand me.
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My Avast 8, once again took 76 secs to startup during the boot, resulting in a 2:51 mins boot time according to Soluto.
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Within the last few months or so I started having problems with booting up which were unpredictable. At the very least booting up was very slow, often taking 5 minutes or more before my PC became usable, but at worst it would get so far through the boot process and then stop responding, the actual point of failure varying each time. I had no choice but to use the big red switch and reboot from scratch.
OK, so my PC is getting on a bit now, but I am running XP with 2MB RAM and a 2.6GHz processor so it's no slouch. and I load only the bare necessities at boot time. The problem was annoying rather than debilitating.
I have been reading threads like this one and thought I would try a couple of the suggestions :-
- I selected the option to load Avast after everything else and
- I edited the avast5.ini file to delay any updating for 240 seconds as suggested here:-
http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/security/3137-avast-5-configuration-for-faster-start-up.html
Now my PC boots up as it used to ... up and running within 30 seconds. I may be wrong but it does seem as if Avast is/was the cause of my booting problems. Is it because, as so often happens with applications like this, the whole package has been enhanced and tweaked so much that it is now, well, bloated?!
I used AVG for a long time but it gradually succumbed to the bloating syndrome. I then moved to Avast because it had some good write ups and it certainly was much quicker and more responsive. I do hope something can be done to prevent it going the same way as AVG.
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I then moved to Avast because it had some good write ups and it certainly was much quicker and more responsive. I do hope something can be done to prevent it going the same way as AVG.
What you've done was to delay the start of the process to check for updates to the VBS file.Apparently that process was starting early for you and may have slowed down the overall boot time.
Even with the increased protection, avast! is still extremely light on system resource usage.
It certainly isn't bloatware. :)
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I then moved to Avast because it had some good write ups and it certainly was much quicker and more responsive. I do hope something can be done to prevent it going the same way as AVG.
What you've done was to delay the start of the process to check for updates to the VBS file.Apparently that process was starting early for you and may have slowed down the overall boot time.
Even with the increased protection, avast! is still extremely light on system resource usage.
It certainly isn't bloatware. :)
Thanks for the reply ... I guess it could be that, although I have 2GB of RAM (silly me put 2MB in my original posting!), it just wasn't enough to handle all the processes going on at once and there was a lot of disk thrashing going on. Delaying the update evens out the use of resources.
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Solved!!
been researching this since upgrading and updating and vista machine on the side ... tried the services and startups, no good, tired xbootmgr from the toolkit, just a big gap after login and black screen reaching desktop .... triend the disabeling rootkit boot, protection and delayed load for avast, still no good .... from the link tried adding AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=360 to the INI file ... Little better performance .... Wait for it ....... Disable Streaming Updates under > Settings > Cloud Services ....
Booted stright to desktop as expected without the black screen delay ...
your all welcome, I only post because I didnt see the answer elsewhere ... good luck
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Solved!!
been researching this since upgrading and updating and vista machine on the side ... tried the services and startups, no good, tired xbootmgr from the toolkit, just a big gap after login and black screen reaching desktop .... triend the disabeling rootkit boot, protection and delayed load for avast, still no good .... from the link tried adding AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=360 to the INI file ... Little better performance .... Wait for it ....... Disable Streaming Updates under > Settings > Cloud Services ....
Booted stright to desktop as expected without the black screen delay ...
your all welcome, I only post because I didnt see the answer elsewhere ... good luck
Solving your problem by disabling what keeps you protected against the newest dangers makes no sense and
certainly only created a worse problem.
I've actually found Soluto to be a great slowdown in the start up process and haven't used it for a very long time.
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I find that Avast slows down my bootup considerably as well. I can live with this, as at least I can do a few things as it's the network connection that takes the longest to come online so I do have access to files etc within a few minutes. The big problem I'm having is that whenever Avast requires a major update, the computer takes ages - up to 20 minutes, to become fully operational. The avast icon doesn't appear in the lower right and the disk churns. It's using the 'system' process, so it took me a while to work out it's avast causing the problems. I will uninstall and reinstall. I don't have too much to complain about as I use the free version but I am going to look for alternatives as this has happened a few times now and two of the times I've really needed access. I am writing this on a laptop, whilst my main desktop is churning away.
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I find that Avast slows down my bootup considerably as well. I can live with this, as at least I can do a few things as it's the network connection that takes the longest to come online so I do have access to files etc within a few minutes. The big problem I'm having is that whenever Avast requires a major update, the computer takes ages - up to 20 minutes, to become fully operational. The avast icon doesn't appear in the lower right and the disk churns. It's using the 'system' process, so it took me a while to work out it's avast causing the problems. I will uninstall and reinstall. I don't have too much to complain about as I use the free version but I am going to look for alternatives as this has happened a few times now and two of the times I've really needed access. I am writing this on a laptop, whilst my main desktop is churning away.
This is probably more related to the amount of ram installed and the amount of processes starting at boot, the quick fix would be to stop as many as possible Un-needed programs from the boot process ( ITunes for example is a major culprit that sets itself to start every boot )