Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: tick on February 15, 2008, 07:22:44 PM
-
There's a serious performance bug in the latest avast! version. :'(
avast! slows down Windows Vista.
avast! causes a lot of hard drive activity every time you launch an application although it's already cached in RAM, it seems avast to be incompatible with Vista's Superfetch.
Try to disable avast and your Windows Vista will fly!!!
Please fix this bug. Thanks
-
Hello,
the lastest avast version is 4.7.1098 and it was released 4th December - so it's quite long time!
avast detects Superfetch activities and it fully cooperates with Vista - so I believe this slowdown is not caused by avast.
Haven't you changed the settings or installed any apps lately?
You can download Process Monitor tool (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx), which shows you what file activities are performed during application startup.
Please let us know what you'll find out.
Thanks!
PS. how long does it take than you'll notice that slowdown? immediately or after X hours... ? thanks.
-
Seriously you can't notice the difference?
It's clear that Avast slow downs Vista a lot forcing frequent HD loadings instead of using Superfetch.
Just try a fresh & clean Vista installation and use it WITHOUT Avast, then install it: you'll notice how slow it becomes on loading/saving apps, browsing dirs, etc. because HD is always at work for all these operations (thing that Superfetch should avoid).
There's also a thread open on an italian Forum: http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showthread.php?p=21488276&posted=1 where many users confirmed this sad (because they all love Avast) experience.
Please investigate and fix this problem: Vista with Avast gets slow making HDs overwork unnecessary.
-
Is this taking place only on first run of the application, or every run?
Also, does it make any difference if you e.g. pause the avast Standard Shield provider?
Thanks
Vlk
-
Is this taking place only on first run of the application, or every run?
Also, does it make any difference if you e.g. pause the avast Standard Shield provider?
Thanks
Vlk
Every run, that's why you notice it. Yes, you notice the big difference even simply pausing the Standard Shield.
I tried to remove almost any sub-option from Standard Shield to isolate the problem but Vista was still very "HD-crunching" :P
Only thing you can do to avoid this problem is A. remove Avast :-[ or B. pause the Standard provider...
Belive me, if you have a Vista machine the test is very simple: disable the Standard provider and you'll suddenly notice the big difference!
-
Which application are you testing it with?
And what hardware do use use? (CPU, RAM,...)
-
Which application are you testing it with?
And what hardware do use use? (CPU, RAM,...)
Doesn't matter: any.
Do you think it's a specific problem on my config? You're wrong: the problem has been confirmed by many users with very diffrent HW and SW. Trust me.
You can't notice the difference with or without the Standard provider enabled? It's evident.
I understand you've coded it and so are skeptical because you can't see nothing strange in the sources but trust me: if you just run Vista without Standard provider enabled you'll see a big difference in every operation Superfetch does: HD's led won't even flash sometimes. With Standard provider enabled instead the HD is heavily affected in all operations.
-
Man, we're not a one-man company - we have a plenty of machines here, some of them having Vista of course.
So, it might be wise to answer Vlk's questions (about the particular configuration) ;)
-
INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6600, 3 GB PC800 DDR2, GE-FORCE 8800 GTS 320 MB VRAM, audio card integrated, motherboard ASUS P5K-E DELUXE, HD MAXTOR 320 GB SATA II, windows vista ultimate 32 bit
i have the same problem, with avast all slow (not too slow) all programs.
-
Man, we're not a one-man company - we have a plenty of machines here, some of them having Vista of course.
So, it might be wise to answer Vlk's questions (about the particular configuration) ;)
As I said: it doesn't matter the HW and SW. If I say I have 2GB, AMD Sempron 3400+ and Vista home basic, but the problem has been confirmed also on a PC 1.. Intel G33 Express..Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6750..Ram ddr2 1x2 samsung 667mhz Vista Home Premium, or a Toshiba Satellite A100-017 Vista Ultimate machine what does this demonstrates? As I said it's been confirmed by many users with very different HW and SW config. This means it's not a SW or HW specific config problem but a weird bug somewhere in Avast.
The problem is evident simply disabling or enabling Standard provider.
I'll reply to all your questions but first tell me: did you test it with a Vista machine and Standard provider ON/OFF? Do you really can't see the difference a lot of other users see about HD overworking when loading/saving any apps?
When it's ON it's like Superfetch datas are ignored...
-
I noticed that too (avast slowing down vista) but no problem on xp.
That's why I disabled everything in standard shield exept "analyze created/mofified files" and I let NOD32's AMON do my "standard shield" as it works perfectly with avast!.
ex : opening MS EXCEL 2007 = 5 sec with standard shield on normal and 2 sec with my perso settings (cf above)
I Think that it's the DLL scan wich is very slow
-
my hd load load load... and only when avast is enabled...
-
Just to add my input. I have been suffering the same since my new laptop was bought with Vista business installed in May 2007.
As an example - with a 9 Megabyte excel file saved on a central MS SBS 2003 server the file load and save performance is markedly different with and without the standard shield enabled. With the shield disabled I can load up the file, press a "refresh button" which activates a macro which pulls down updated information from another server and save the file again - this process takes 30 seconds. With the standard shield enabled, the same process takes 2 minutes and 10 seconds - for a great deal of the time the hard disc activity light is constantly lit. This is not an issue with every other PC on the network which run XP Professional.
With some of the larger files I use it can take up to 5 minutes to save a file across the network. To be honest, this rubbish performance has prevented me ordering any other vista machines for the network. Until I read this forum I had thought it was a vista problem. I have just renewed my site licence for 2 years with Avast.
Richard
-
Well... maybe it's time to me to review the guiltiness of Vista in my notebook too.
MS Office is not that fast as it is on XP, for sure...
-
There's a serious performance bug in the latest avast! version. :'(
avast! slows down Windows Vista.
avast! causes a lot of hard drive activity every time you launch an application although it's already cached in RAM, it seems avast to be incompatible with Vista's Superfetch.
Try to disable avast and your Windows Vista will fly!!!
Please fix this bug. Thanks
Yes I confirm I have the same problem he have this is my configuration ASUS A8N SLI DELUXE Athlon64 FX 60 2GB OCZ ddr 400 dual channel @ 200mhz 2,5 2 3 5 GEFORCE 8600 gts hd 2 maxtor dmax 9 80gb raid 0 dvd-r Lg 4167b
without Avast my pc i s more more faster and I'm sorry because I really like Avast.
-
without Avast my pc i s more more faster and I'm sorry because I really like Avast.
Sure... I won't expect that an antivirus has zero impact in the performance.
The question point here if it is acceptable, if there are other solutions to this inconvenience.
Protection takes resources. The equation will be always there. Even comparing products, you'll need to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.
-
without Avast my pc i s more more faster and I'm sorry because I really like Avast.
Sure... I won't expect that an antivirus has zero impact in the performance.
The question point here if it is acceptable, if there are other solutions to this inconvenience.
Protection takes resources. The equation will be always there. Even comparing products, you'll need to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.
I know! but the difference is awesome like more than 50% slow to open a Oo writer for example and with another antivirus (AVI..) for example I can't tell the difference but with avast every program I load slow down so much :'(
-
I know! but the difference is awesome like more than 50% slow to open a Oo writer for example and with another antivirus (AVI..) for example I can't tell the difference but with avast every program I load slow down so much :'(
Try opening the Standard Shield settings and uncheck to scan open/create/modified files and test the impact.
-
without Avast my pc i s more more faster and I'm sorry because I really like Avast.
Sure... I won't expect that an antivirus has zero impact in the performance.
The question point here if it is acceptable, if there are other solutions to this inconvenience.
Protection takes resources. The equation will be always there. Even comparing products, you'll need to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.
No the fact is that Avast slow-downs a lot Vista forcing HD frequent loadings/writings. It's not a little (expected by a virus scanner) slow down. With the Standard provider disabled there's a big difference. It's an HD unnecessary overwork. Vista has Superfetch that wroks really fine reducing HD access to minimal. With Standard provider ON every action forces some HD noise, which is not normal.
Just test this: disable the Standard provider (=pause) yourself for a short time and you'll immediately notice the difference in HD loadings. You cannnot deny the difference if you make this simple test.
It looks like Avast routines bypass and don't cooperate with Vista's Superfetch.
As I've already written I tried to disable any option in Standard provider but was still the same. Only way to stop this strange behaviour was to Pause it or uncheck the whole 1st page settings... It's like Nort***n + Kasp***y together on a 486! ;) Ok, maybe not so slow but the difference is evident however...
PS
How do I disable my email address view in this forum? You can see it? I've set "Hide from public" but I still see the little mail icon aside...
-
You cannnot deny the difference if you make this simple test.
It looks like Avast routines bypass and don't cooperate with Vista's Superfetch.
I'm an user like you. The programmers should say if avast cooperates or not with Superfetch.
I don't know.
How do I disable my email address view in this forum? You can see it? I've set "Hide from public" but I still see the little mail icon aside...
You're the only that can see your own email, not the other users.
-
After browsing over this thread a bit, it does seem that this issue could be the root of my list of problems in my other thread posted here about my own series of odd slow-downs, so I can confirm this as being a viable bug too (however I haven't experienced any significant slow downs for saving in applications as listed here, or whatever, but rather in a series of other odd similar situations).
If those investigating this are looking for more possible relevant material to this, you can feel free to check out my post as well over here. (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=33852.0) I'm hoping this issue will make it into the 4.8 update, but I guess the staff should take whatever time they need to properly resolve/diagnose this first rather than rush it.
-
After browsing over this thread a bit, it does seem that this issue could be the root of my list of problems in my other thread posted here about my own series of odd slow-downs, so I can confirm this as being a viable bug too (however I haven't experienced any significant slow downs for saving in applications as listed here, or whatever, but rather in a series of other odd similar situations).
If those investigating this are looking for more possible relevant material to this, you can feel free to check out my post as well over here. (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=33852.0) I'm hoping this issue will make it into the 4.8 update, but I guess the staff should take whatever time they need to properly resolve/diagnose this first rather than rush it.
Indeed
-
No words from the Avast team? :-[
They are investigating or simply ignored these reports?
-
Hello,
the lastest avast version is 4.7.1098 and it was released 4th December - so it's quite long time!
avast detects Superfetch activities and it fully cooperates with Vista - so I believe this slowdown is not caused by avast.
I'm sorry but IT IS for sure.
Haven't you changed the settings or installed any apps lately?
No, it's an Avast problem with Vista, not a conflict with some other software.
PS. how long does it take than you'll notice that slowdown? immediately or after X hours... ? thanks.
Immediately since it's probably a bug in the way the Standard provider works
-
I don't doubt that you are having problems, but if it were truly a bug in avast (alone) then there would be a huge amount of topics/posts about it in the forums and I just don't see them.
I'm just an avast user like yourself but I don't use Vista and will stick with XP Pro for some time yet, so I can't do any tests. I'm sure that the avast team will have done extensive tests on Vista systems and I can only assume that they didn't experience it as it wouldn't be in their interest to fix a problem they encountered.
-
Hey guys, my boot time with avast! latest stable or latest beta is around 5 minutes on Vista SP1. Without avast!( with Avira installed for comparison) the boot time is around 1 minute. This all started after i installed SP1, before that the boot time was normal. I didn't suspect avast! as the cause before, after reading this thread i decided to uninstall and give it a try and there's a huge difference in boot speed. Disabling the standard scanner helped abit but the boot time was still very long. Checking the " delay loading of avast services ... " box had little effect aswell. Besides the excessive boot time i haven't noticed any other slowdowns though.
I am willing to let Vlk VPN into my machine again if that would help in any way ...
-
Besides the excessive boot time i haven't noticed any other slowdowns though.
Mine too... I wish I had a shorter boot time in my Vista laptop. I know avast has impact, but why will it worth testing uninstalling it if I really want to keep it... If Vlk needs remote access to my computer, just let me know...
Is there any tool like the old Bootvis that could trace Vista booting?
-
Found this thread on my monthly pilgrimage to Avast Forums, so I decide to perform some unscientific tests to see if I have an issue too. On my Vista(non sp1) with 4.7.1098, I don't seem to have this issue. When I run excel 2007, Avast scans it the first time then won't scan it again. I presume due to utilizing superfetch. Same happens with word, powerpoint, etc. While I don't claim to refute what others are seeing, I thought I would share the info. Could it be possible that in tweaking vista you have disabled a service necessary for superfetch to optimize performance? Just a thought. BTW, my tests were performed using Standard Shield Last Scanned field as an indicator of activity vs. performance timings. My laptop is pretty fast so excel after the first run does take less than a second.
PS. When opening a file from a link Avast always scans the file and the .lnk but not the executable.
-
but not the executable
Are you sure? There is no sense on scanning the .lnk and not the executable ???
-
When I click excel from the start menu it doesn't increment the scanned count or the last scanned fields. The .lnk and .xlsx files are scanned when using a link off my quick launch bar on the task bar. Using the last scanned and scan count as indication. So pretty sure...but using the rudementary visual tools decribed. Hope it helps.
-
but using the rudementary visual tools decribed.
Just to clarify this was a comment on my testing methodology not the tools! ;D
-
When I click excel from the start menu it doesn't increment the scanned count or the last scanned fields. The .lnk and .xlsx files are scanned when using a link off my quick launch bar on the task bar. Using the last scanned and scan count as indication. So pretty sure...but using the rudementary visual tools decribed. Hope it helps.
Well... living and learning... maybe some explanation from Vlk or Igor will help me understand...
-
truth is when i installed two exactly same notebooks one with XP Pro and one with Vista Home (both with Avast 4.7 then tested also 4.8beta)...
for some reason booting and working in XP was nearly twice as fast ... when i disabled avast! standard shield Vista was just bit slower
i'm sorry i not tested disable onread but it's hard to say what's reason ...
-
Evidence is that HD overworks with Avast Standard provider on Vista. It's not simply a matter of "speed" (that may vary depending on your powerful hardware and you might not notice). You have to watch and hear the HD.
With Avast running every action forces HD loadings, without it Superfetch of Vista works very well loading just a little bit from HD (and is also faster obviously).
The fact that's not been widely reported is beacuse:
1. Vista + Avast is not so frequent because a lot still have XP...
2. if you don't look and hear to your HD you won't "notice" the problem and will just say "Well, it's Vista that is slow, and the AV has a reasonable impact over it", that is wrong: it has a huge impact, but you don't mind at it and won't blame Avast but Vista which is new etc. etc.
You have to make the speed test with big applications or simply running Administrators tool in Vista (Event Viewer and Scheduled tasks for example). They will make HD overwork, always, instead of using Superfetch and loading faster and without HD noise at all (almost).
-
In my experience with vista, that is the way vista is designed. Ie. It will take advantage of idle time to do tasks. There seems to be a lot more going on under the covers with vista vs. XP, hence the HD activity. Supposedly SP1 is supposed to minimize some of this HD activity. Have you watched the On access scanner detail of avast during the periods of HD activity to see what is being scanned or if the scan count is incremented?
-
In my experience with vista, that is the way vista is designed. Ie. It will take advantage of idle time to do tasks. There seems to be a lot more going on under the covers with vista vs. XP, hence the HD activity. Supposedly SP1 is supposed to minimize some of this HD activity. Have you watched the On access scanner detail of avast during the periods of HD activity to see what is being scanned or if the scan count is incremented?
I use Vista since march 07 and I know it quite well. The problem is Avast, not Vista. It doesn't matter what's scanning... yes, I've tested this.
Vista HD activity is very low after initial boot where Superfetch, ReadyBoost/ReadyBoot and other services load a lot of data from HD (with low priority). But just in the beginning. After they finish (and you completed Indexing on your computer) HD activity is very low, without Avast.
-
I understand...I also have been using it since March 2007. My indexer is always working because of Emails coming and being deleted as an example. That said you have not answered the question of whether or not the on access scanner shows what is being scanned by Avast.
-
I understand...I also have been using it since March 2007. My indexer is always working because of Emails coming and being deleted as an example. That said you have not answered the question of whether or not the on access scanner shows what is being scanned by Avast.
For sure it shows what's scanning, nothing special to report (un-normal) in this area. I've been using Avast for 6 months before discovering this problem :( switching to another AV... Avast works without apparent problems or something wrong to report on Vista, except that it affects HD loadings a lot. That's why is also hard to convince authors to even see the problem...
I was (I thought) very happy of Avast :(
PS
Indexer in Vista is always working, but it won't cause hd overwork. I meant the first indexing: it takes almost an afternoon but after this you'll see something like
(http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200803/20080318204039_Immagine.jpg)
(Indicizzazione completata = indexing complete)
It has nothing to do with Avast problem forcing HD eccessive work...
-
This post was about Avast inhibiting the superfetch. While I don't know what you guys are specifically seeing (since the indexer dialog isn't informative.), my tests of the superfetch/caching function showed to me that avast was not scanning my applications after the first load. While superfetch is supposed to keep track of applications commonly used and preload them (at least that is one description I read), I don't see avast scanning these. Maybe vista's reliability and performance monitor can tell you what application is hitting your hard drive when its activity is excessive. Maybe then this information would hint at what Avast may be doing on your computer. In mine I do see ashserv.exe and ashdisp.exe reading the pagefile.sys. I don't know if this is normal or if the exclusion is not working under standard shield. Maybe it has to do with this.
-
Check and see if there is an exclusion in Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced and see if c:\pagefile.sys is included, if not Add it to the list (see image).
Note in the image i have changed the c for a ? (wildcard character), that way if you have your pagefile.sys in more than one drive that will take care of that without having to have two entries.
-
This post was about Avast inhibiting the superfetch. While I don't know what you guys are specifically seeing (since the indexer dialog isn't informative.), my tests of the superfetch/caching function showed to me that avast was not scanning my applications after the first load. While superfetch is supposed to keep track of applications commonly used and preload them (at least that is one description I read), I don't see avast scanning these. Maybe vista's reliability and performance monitor can tell you what application is hitting your hard drive when its activity is excessive. Maybe then this information would hint at what Avast may be doing on your computer. In mine I do see ashserv.exe and ashdisp.exe reading the pagefile.sys. I don't know if this is normal or if the exclusion is not working under standard shield. Maybe it has to do with this.
Well I think it's a relatively hard issue to pinpoint because the symptoms of this range a bit further than some of the reports here which suggest that it isn't very simple. I've actually made a pretty detailed post (located here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=33852.0 ) about my problems which seem to have some relation to this as well. Now I'm not a master with deciphering what's going on in the superfetch, but I can say that disabling avast! has a significant impact on the read/writing length and intensity on my HDD upon start-up (as well as the other loading issues described in my older thread).
Check and see if there is an exclusion in Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced and see if c:\pagefile.sys is included, if not Add it to the list (see image).
Note in the image i have changed the c for a ? (wildcard character), that way if you have your pagefile.sys in more than one drive that will take care of that without having to have two entries.
Although I'm not sure if this post was addressed to everyone experiencing these problems or just the other person who said more relevant information, I've checked my own settings and found this to already be setup as intended.
Also for some further information, I've recently gotten SP1 on this rig and have found no notable changes to these symptoms and that again once I disable avast!'s protection the issues do go away. For that reason it looks like that for the most part it isn't mainly a behaviour issue with Vista, but more or less one with avast! and how it handles the various components in Vista. Though I can be patient, this problem has been going on for a long time and has bothered/worried me a fair bit, so I'm hoping that this does get addressed soon.
-
Anyone experiencing the issue, could you please try a small experiment?
N.B. this is for users of 32-bit Vista only.
Please download the updated Standard Shield driver from the following location
http://public.avast.com/~vlk/vista-lag/i386/aswMonFlt.sys
and place it to the \Windows\System32\Drivers folder (overwrite existing).
Then reboot the machine.
Does that make any difference?
Thanks
Vlk
-
Solemn - Hopefully, the new driver will make a difference for you. After reading your older post, I noticed you run Avast on High. I run mine at normal and have noticed that setting it on high on an older XP machine rendered it painful performance wise. Does changing that to normal make a difference? Just trying to figure out the differences. I believe the excessive hard drive activity after startup could be superfetch doing its job of preloading applications that you use regularly, but maybe avast is causing that time to be longer than it should be. Hope the driver works, because our systems can never be fast enough. If Avast finds something in the code it will benefit us all.
-
Vlk, how can we benchmark the performance before and after the new driver?
I can test but I want to do it technically, not just an impression of better performance.
-
Anyone experiencing the issue, could you please try a small experiment?
N.B. this is for users of 32-bit Vista only.
Please download the updated Standard Shield driver from the following location
http://public.avast.com/~vlk/vista-lag/i386/aswMonFlt.sys
and place it to the \Windows\System32\Drivers folder (overwrite existing).
Then reboot the machine.
Does that make any difference?
Thanks
Vlk
After first reboot, Webshield was not working anymore unable to load web pages !!! >:( :o computer hangs etc...
I did stop the computer ther turn it on then it seems ok now.. ??? ???
looks a bit faster
-
This is the result of replacing the updated driver on my machine. Some of the resident providers cannot start, those are : Standard Shield, P2P Shield and IM Shield. The rest work fine.
(http://shrani.si/t/31/123/1kIIWANg/standardshield.jpg) (http://shrani.si/?31/123/1kIIWANg/standardshield.jpg)
Also i can see the following logged in event viewer(it logs the same thing every 2 seconds).
AAVM - initialization error: DriverScanListenThread: FilterComm_Send, AVMON_COMMAND_THREAD_READY failed!, 80070057.
-
Vlk, how can we benchmark the performance before and after the new driver?
I can test but I want to do it technically, not just an impression of better performance.
???
-
This is the result of replacing the updated driver on my machine. Some of the resident providers cannot start, those are : Standard Shield, P2P Shield and IM Shield. The rest work fine.
(http://shrani.si/t/31/123/1kIIWANg/standardshield.jpg) (http://shrani.si/?31/123/1kIIWANg/standardshield.jpg)
Also i can see the following logged in event viewer(it logs the same thing every 2 seconds).
AAVM - initialization error: DriverScanListenThread: FilterComm_Send, AVMON_COMMAND_THREAD_READY failed!, 80070057.
Sorry, I forgot to say that you need to install the 4.8 beta first...
That is, the driver assumes that the other avast components are of v4.8.
Vlk, how can we benchmark the performance before and after the new driver?
I can test but I want to do it technically, not just an impression of better performance.
I'm not sure what exactly you'd like to hear...
As I said, the problem is not reproducible on any of our Vista machines (and there are at least tens of these here).
The patch is only intended for people who believe they're hit by the problem.
If you're in such a position, it should be fairly easy to tell if the patch has any effect or not.
Thanks
Vlk
-
Thanks for the update on the issue Vlk! However, I have to apologize that I'm not one that enjoys beta-testing often due to stabilities issues that can sometimes arise in programs (especially in Vista), but I might give it a shot depending on what others who've experienced this have found.
I hope the staff doesn't mind this, but my mood on this might change soon as I do wish to offer my contribution in solving this issue. Perhaps I'm just a bit paranoid in keeping full system stability, but I guess me having to manually customize a few things and install a beta is what's causing me to be a bit iffy. :-\ Maybe somebody can help clarify that there will be no (to little) possibility in any form of system damage in installing these beta's or moving on from avast! beta's to final builds (and if that the modification of the standard shield won't do any harm similar to this). But aside from that, I'll definitely consider taking up the update sometime soon though.
-
i was under 4.8 version !! and still this morning , i had to reboot my computer because of imposibility to access the internet !! help please !
How can i get back to previous system32 file ? do i have to make an "avast! repair" , can i download previous file ?
This modification bugged my PC :( :'(
vlk please help
-
up up up ;D
-
sorry to insist, but Vlk, could you send me the original file so i could copy it in my system32 folder and repair my computer ?
Thx
-
Just a suggestion...Might be quicker to uninstall and reinstall
-
maybe but i would lose my personnal settings... :-\
-
A repair of the installation should work (Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> avast! antivirus -> Repair).
Anyway, to be honest, I doubt the problems you're seeing are related to the driver.
We will have this driver in the next 4.8 beta refresh (due tomorrow), so we will so what the general acceptance will be like, but I'd be very much surprised if it were causing any problems... the changes were quite "benign", so to say...
Cheers
Vlk
-
I've the same problem. The HD works more than normal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTEL CORE Q6600 rev. G0, 3 GB P DDR2 1066, GE-FORCE 8800 GT 512 MB VRAM, motherboard ASUS P5K-E WI-FI, HD Western Digital 120 GB SATA II, windows vista home premium 32 bit
-
A repair of the installation should work (Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> avast! antivirus -> Repair).
Anyway, to be honest, I doubt the problems you're seeing are related to the driver.
We will have this driver in the next 4.8 beta refresh (due tomorrow), so we will so what the general acceptance will be like, but I'd be very much surprised if it were causing any problems... the changes were quite "benign", so to say...
Cheers
Vlk
Alright then, I think I'll try out the new beta and see if it fixes anything once it's out. Vista does have its quirks though that sometimes drive me up the wall a bit (even with SP1 on) ::) so I guess it'll just take a while to iron everything out.
I also have a question though for those who have any information about this, but will installing a beta affect how I'll have to update avast! to the final release version of 4.8? For instance, will I have to do a reinstall/uninstall or will it just update normally to the final version without any problems?
-
I also have a question though for those who have any information about this, but will installing a beta affect how I'll have to update avast! to the final release version of 4.8? For instance, will I have to do a reinstall/uninstall or will it just update normally to the final version without any problems?
No difference at all. You simply invoke program update from within the avast GUI, and it will take care of the rest (no need to uninstall/reinstall etc).
-
Thanks Vlk! I think I'll give the new beta a shot then when it comes out. Hopefully this will resolve this tricky issue. ;)
-
it works this morning;.. maybe you're right and the problem occured also the day i installed vista sp1 so...
thx again
-
Anyone having this problem is welcome to try the latest v4.8 beta.
Please see the Beta forum subcategory for details.
Thanks
Vlk
-
Thanks for the new release Vlk! (and the rest of the avast! team)
I'll be trying out the new beta right now. :)
-
Alright, I have some interesting good news to report after successfully installing the Beta with no notable problems.
According to this thread: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=33852.0 the problems I had with loading/streaming Flash-based videos causing some minor lag and unresponsiveness has indeed been fixed!! :) I've tried reproducing this multiple times, and it seems that everything runs smoothly and closes smoothly as it should. (Before there would sometimes be delay where you could hear sound/music still playing for 1 second or so right when applications like Winamp actively playing music or FireFox actively streaming a video were closed--now it cuts out appropriately without any notable problems or delay).
Also, although I have not done extensive attempts to reproduce this, several old error messages I used to get as described in this thread: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=33052.0 seem to no longer appear! I tried to clear the Cache via Firefox's built-in function and it did so instantly and smoothly with no delay. CCleaner similarly has not done anything odd with suddenly reopening or closing while cleaning and has also not produced any error messages as it sometimes would. However, I cannot close this issue yet and will see if I can reproduce the problem or not some more (it was a relatively unstable one to pinpoint that could vary depending on the cache size I believe, so this may take a while longer).
As for some odd things I've noticed: the first one is that even upon boot-up it seems that the HDD activity is short for a while then suddenly gets very high again for a very, very long time. I'm not sure if this is the rootkit boot-time scan for avast! though, but when viewing the Vista Performance Manager, it looked like the real things reading/writing at that moment were the a LOT of images labeled as "svchost" reading/writing various files. I think it's more or less a Vista issue here or something situational since it was the first boot-up after the beta was installed---I think I'm going to have to test this more before I can confirm it to be an avast! problem or not.
The second and last thing I can note is that my HDD light blinks every now and then (around 5-10 second intervals). Unfortunately I can't confirm if this is normal and if it happened earlier on before the beta install, but it happens and bothers me a bit. Disabling avast!'s providers doesn't affect this though, and upon viewing the Vista Performance Manager revealed that there were still quite a few images labeled as "System" reading/writing various files--so my guess is that this was probably something normal for Vista.
Other than these reports so far everything's been running fine--many thanks to the avast team! I'll post another report sometime soon to further clarify if some of these issues are fully fixed or not as testing isn't entirely done yet.
P.S Sorry for the long post :P and BTW I love the new context menu icon!
EDIT: Almost forgot to mention that there are 2 minor bugs that should probably be fixed in the final release. After installing the beta, my settings were changed from High to Custom because the Instant Messaging Scanner had the program "QQ" unchecked from its scanning list. Also the program "Utorrent" is still unchecked from the scanning list in the P2P scanner, and has been like this in 4.7 as well. Checking it changes the settings to Custom, and I think it should be auto-checked already with High settings instead.
-
A repair of the installation should work (Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> avast! antivirus -> Repair).
Vlk
it appears this solved my problem. THX
-
Evidence is that HD overworks with Avast Standard provider on Vista. It's not simply a matter of "speed" (that may vary depending on your powerful hardware and you might not notice). You have to watch and hear the HD.
With Avast running every action forces HD loadings, without it Superfetch of Vista works very well loading just a little bit from HD (and is also faster obviously).
The fact that's not been widely reported is beacuse:
1. Vista + Avast is not so frequent because a lot still have XP...
2. if you don't look and hear to your HD you won't "notice" the problem and will just say "Well, it's Vista that is slow, and the AV has a reasonable impact over it", that is wrong: it has a huge impact, but you don't mind at it and won't blame Avast but Vista which is new etc. etc.
You have to make the speed test with big applications or simply running Administrators tool in Vista (Event Viewer and Scheduled tasks for example). They will make HD overwork, always, instead of using Superfetch and loading faster and without HD noise at all (almost).
I can confirm that this problem is real, and is still affecting vista (SP2) which is especially a problem for my laptop that doesn't have good cpu speed/memory.
I did not have this noticable problem with AVG...
-
You have noticed that this topic is at the latest point almost 3 years old, so would be for avast 4.x.
So you should start your own new topic, giving information on your avast version.