Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Chucky500 on May 05, 2014, 10:27:53 AM
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With the update from 8.0.1483 to 1506, the avast updater seems to update the engine and virus defs everytime the computer is booted up and connected to the internet, as opposed to just streaming down lite updates. avast.setup grows to an enormous size, some 300MB, and brings the computer to a crawl, with the whole process taking upwards of an hour, with much swapping and harddrive activity going on. Even once this whole update process is finished, the computer seems a fair amount slower in Firefox and so on.
Also, I am back to having to shutdown avast (all the shields disabled) before I shutdown the os, or upon boot things will hang when trying to access things from the taskbar (this is an early-v8 problem I've run into before, but 1483 did not have the problem).
What do I do? For now, I will just turn off updates. Do I go back to 1483, or try this new version - 9.0.1506?
W2K SP4.
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Hello Chucky500!
Can you give us some details of your PC:
1. installed RAM?
2. size of harddisk? how much GB are free?
My recommendation:
Please install avast! Free V8.0.1497 - this is the final one for Windows 2000.
The latest released v8 version is 8.0.1497. Builds over 1500 are meant only to switch over to v9 and are not intended for daily use (1501 should probably work on Windows XP SP1 and below, though).
avast! Release History of V8.0.1506: Support version for migration to AVAST 2014
avast! V2014.9.0.xxxx is NOT compatible with W2K.
You can adapt in "settings menu":
VIRUS DEFINITIONS to "Automatic update".
PROGRAM UPDATES to "Manual update".
I would de-activate the "streaming updates" -> this helps to increase performance of PC.
How often are you online with this Windows 2000-PC?
Do you have possibility to download the VPS-update via a second PC?
Link of avast! 5-8 VPS: http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/vpsupd.exe
Put EXE-file to a USB-Stick and install the update (being OFFLINE) on W2K-PC.
Then the biggest part would be done before connecting your old PC to internet.
Regards!
INGBEAN
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Hi Ingbean,
Installed ram is 648MB.
There are several partitions, but avast is residing on the C: partition, which currently has about 650MB free.
Should I uninstall 8.0.1506 and download 8.0.1497? So no more support for W2K? How long will 8.0.1497 be supported? Recommendations as to where to go? I think this computer is going to be running another year or two. I have W2K SP4, and that I understand is quite similiar to XP SP3, but I don't know too much about the details of that.
Streaming updates haven't really presented a problem in previous versions of v8. The problem is the big engine and virus updates that seem to occur everyday I go to the internet with this new version of 1506. I don't know why now they are insisting on doing the big stuff everyday. It sure causes a lot of disk grinding, especially if I happen to have a big job going on when I hit the internet. Basically it stops everything for a good hour or more! Is it setting up new dependencies with that engine and virus def file stuff?
Thanks!
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ah so I wasn't wrong in assuming it was Avast causing my compy to crawl.
(http://lh6.ggpht.com/-36X1BM56uko/U2mN4qBSNmI/AAAAAAAAGdo/_FfuFLD1hiE/s479/system.PNG)
(http://lh5.ggpht.com/-zoCkWKk_8A0/U2mODyWoIAI/AAAAAAAAGdw/eghoQfIYcNY/s789/Avast.PNG)
if my images are too big for anyone here, let me know and I'll resize the link :)
I've been using Avast for about 5 months now, but only recently did it start crawling and freezing...
and even causing my browser's plugins to overload...
also, I'm not pointing fingers here, but it may also be the reason my Hibernation data corrupts about 50% of the time.
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1. Installed ram is 648MB.
There are several partitions, but avast is residing on the C: partition, which currently has about 650MB free.
2. How long will 8.0.1497 be supported? Recommendations as to where to go? I think this computer is going to be running another year or two.
Hello Chucky500!
1. Well, 650MB free on HDD is really not much. :( (pagefile.sys, recycle bin and temporary (internet) files needs space too).
Now size of definition folder is around 164MB.
During online-update, your PC gets updates from avast!-server, creates new (updated) folder and finishes with deletion of old folder on HDD.
No wonder that your PC has high HDD activity...
Try to get more free space on your HDD-partition and defragment it.
I would suggest more RAM too (data are swapped from RAM to harddisk).
Do you have a possibility to install additional RAM to your PC?
Or is 648 MB already the maximum?
I think this would be helpful.
2. A official "end-of-support" date wasn't given now. One or two years should be no time problem.
For example: VPS-updates for V4.8 are STILL available (and final V4.8 Free-version was released end of 2009).
I expect rather hardware problems.
Because you never know what happens on virus codes in the future and how many HDD space is needed for protection...
INGBEAN
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I noticed you're not using SP3 ???
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The latest service pack for WinXP 64 bit is SP2. WinXP 32 bit has an SP3.
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The latest service pack for WinXP 64 bit is SP2. WinXP 32 bit has an SP3.
Thanks John I missed the 64 bit.
I do notice very minimal ram and extremely low disk space. Both of which can have a severe adverse affect.
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Well, I had the auto updates turned off before I went to the Internet. The big job I mentioned previously had finished for the day, so I decided with the UI to turn on auto updates. The brown face with the straight smile prompted me for an update, so I went for it. There is very little problem now with thrashing. avast.setup is staying at a fairly reasonable size, so it may be that trying to do an update with a big job going at the same time is a no-no.
The free space on the C: drive is after the pagefile.sys, etc. are in place. Defragger says I don't need to defrag. There are two swapfiles, a small one on the C: drive and one in a partition on the faster drive. It occurred to me that maybe I should reinstall avast (say go back to 8.0.1497) in its own partition on the faster drive.
Hmm, well now avast.setup has expanded its vm space to ~300MB while it's downloading vps_32-*.vpx files, but things are still running well. Just juggling that and another 400MB job gets problematic.
Still don't understand why it has to download these big files everytime. On 8.0.1483, it was downloading lots of little files (which had its own issues). With 1506, things are more like they were a couple of major avast revisions ago.
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I backpedalled to 8.0.1497 from 1506.
Any way to turn off the engine updates and only keep the streaming updates? I was thinking I would update the engine only once a week or somesuch. In 1483, I only had streaming updates, and every once in awhile the engine would update. I think it was set to auto updates there. Did the behavior for auto change sometime after 1483?
The engine updates are rather disruptive. I lost a good 45 minutes to that earlier this afternoon.
Thx.
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Going further and further back in versions isn't advised - the latest version is 9.0.2021 - see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0 (https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0).
1. No - the virus definitions and engine updates are combined and the streaming updates require that the virus definitions and engine updates are set to automatic.
2. as I said the engine update is combined with the virus definitions update.
3. the virus definitions and engine updates have always been set to auto update. Only the Program updates are set to 'Ask when an update is available.'
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Hello DavidR!
Going further and further back in versions isn't advised - the latest version is 9.0.2021 - see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0 (https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0).
Remark: Chucky500 is using Windows 2000 -> and my recommendations in https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=149894.msg1089834#msg1089834 are still valid.
Best Regards!
INGBEAN
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Hello DavidR!
Going further and further back in versions isn't advised - the latest version is 9.0.2021 - see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0 (https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151290.0).
Remark: Chucky500 is using Windows 2000 -> and my recommendations in https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=149894.msg1089834#msg1089834 are still valid.
Best Regards!
INGBEAN
Thanks, I wasn't aware Chucky500 was still on Win2k (no profile signature), a very valid reason for sticking with avast! Free Version 8.0.1497.