Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: theunidada on June 13, 2018, 07:29:38 PM
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About a month ago i run the following test to measure system startup time with and without avast, thought it could be interesting:
Startup time before uninstalling avast:
6 minutes 05 seconds
Startup time after uninstalling avast:
2 minutes 02 seconds
Startup time after reinstalling avast:
4 minutes 55 seconds
Startup time is measured as the amount of time elapsed between pressing the power button and the HDD led eventually going off (no activity). This is because only afterwards the system becomes usable.
Reinstalling improved startup time by a full minute, still nowhere near acceptability land tho.
It's worth noting that i have not scheduled startup scans. procmon shows that the processes responsible are "instup", "aswidsagenta", "AvastSvc" in no particular order.
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Interesting.
What are the hardware specifications and operating system in use?
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What are the hardware specifications and operating system in use?
It's Win7, 8gb ram, i5 4440s, gtx 750ti, MSI B85M eco, WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 (almost full). Latest version of Avast Free. If you need more info just ask. I can try defrag but i doubt it would do anything.
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If by "WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 (almost full)" you are talking about a Western Digital Hard drive ?
Then that could well be hindering your systems performance. If you have less than 15% free space then Windows will have a rough time and may not be able to even do a defrag as it has to have space to move stuff around.
Your startup time of 2 minutes 02 seconds isn't particularly fast considering your system spec, which should be more than up to the task on a win7 system.
My system spec for an even older XP system (signature below my posts) is less than that and I don't believe it takes that long from a cold start. But I have plenty of hard drive space on my primary HDD and I also have a secondary HDD on that system.
My first suggestion would be to check the programs that you allow to start on boot, followed by trying to move some data, media files to an off-line HDD and free up some space on your HDD.
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All correct, but even if i manage to double disk performance by freeing space and removing startup programs so that startup time without avast is 1 minute, with avast it would still be 3 minutes. I don't see how doing so would get rid of the big portion introduced by avast.
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In addition, it's been my experience that any 3rd party Security (malware) software does impede processing at start regardless. The differences in time between software products is typically insignificant all things equal.
Having said that, it also can depend on what 'specific' components you have chosen to install using the custom installation option> more components installed the more resources used which in turn can effect startup time.
Just my experience :)
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All correct, but even if i manage to double disk performance by freeing space and removing startup programs so that startup time without avast is 1 minute, with avast it would still be 3 minutes. I don't see how doing so would get rid of the big portion introduced by avast.
The greater the number of programs running at startup the greater the activity of the AV will be and this isn't just Avast.
On this XP system the impact of Avast is negligible, but startup is a busy time and the three elements you mentioned - "instup", "aswidsagenta", "AvastSvc" - are part and parcel of the protection.
1. Instup - is the installation and update function and shortly after boot it checks for updates.
2. aswidsagenta - AvastSoftWare IntrusionDetectionSystem Agent, this I believe is related to the Behaviour shield.
3. AvastSvc - Avast SerViCe - the main avast service controlling the various scanning functions.
Whilst I don't believe this will make a great difference you could try this:
AvastUI > Settings > Troubleshooting - enable the 'Load Avast services only after loading other system services.
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Having said that, it also can depend on what 'specific' components you have chosen to install using the custom installation option> more components installed the more resources used which in turn can effect startup time.
Just my experience :)
Nice idea. The components window says i have file, behavior, web, e-mail shields and wifi inspector.
The greater the number of programs running at startup the greater the activity of the AV will be and this isn't just Avast.
On this XP system the impact of Avast is negligible, but startup is a busy time and the three elements you mentioned - "instup", "aswidsagenta", "AvastSvc" - are part and parcel of the protection.
1. Instup - is the installation and update function and shortly after boot it checks for updates.
2. aswidsagenta - AvastSoftWare IntrusionDetectionSystem Agent, this I believe is related to the Behaviour shield.
3. AvastSvc - Avast SerViCe - the main avast service controlling the various scanning functions.
Whilst I don't believe this will make a great difference you could try this:
AvastUI > Settings > Troubleshooting - enable the 'Load Avast services only after loading other system services.
I think i have tried that already, can't remember clearly. I don't have much in programs or services running at startup, i even disabled windows update (i do them manually monthly), windows search and prefetcher.
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The slowest part of your system is the HDD - WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 - you said in Reply # 2 (almost full). You didn't say how full.
Too much data and not enough free space to run Windows and\or programs dynamically will make a HDD perform slower. Symptom is a lot of disk thrashing on boot.
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The slowest part of your system is the HDD - WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 - you said in Reply # 2 (almost full). You didn't say how full.
Too much data and not enough free space to run Windows and\or programs dynamically will make a HDD perform slower. Symptom is a lot of disk thrashing on boot.
+1 :)
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The slowest part of your system is the HDD - WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 - you said in Reply # 2 (almost full). You didn't say how full.
Too much data and not enough free space to run Windows and\or programs dynamically will make a HDD perform slower. Symptom is a lot of disk thrashing on boot.
The partition is 89% full and 22+gb left so there's plenty of room. I don't see how this would explain why avast takes 2x times the disk usage than the rest of the system combined to load.