SBS 2003 performance problems

[coastlinetech]

I have installed ADNM on a SBS 2003 and deployed avast to 7 workstations all running XP Pro SP2.  The SBS is only running ADNM.   Install and deployment went smooth as silk.  Prior to this install everything on this network was working fine.    After having Avast for about 7 days, the network is "slow".  Logins take longer, users are notified that their network drives could not be reconnected, they get messages from various programs about "delayed writes" when editing files on the server.   

There are no errors on the server and I cannot see anything unusual going on.  Aside from blaming a security update from MS (If they released an update this past week) the only new variable in the office is Avast. 

[JBDive]

DITTO!

All my folder redirection stopped and finally even the administrator console was locked at "applying settings". Had to hard crash the server, safe mode, disable avast services, reboot. After that everything was fine although network logons are still slower than before deploying aVast.

I suspect an update came down that broke something as it was working for a week. Without a direct fix and since I was in demo mode anyway I had no real choice but to uninstall aVast on the server and wait for support to give an answer.

Suggest you may be in the same boat and things will get worse on your network. You may want to either disable the services or maybe just the network provider as you sure don't want to have to hard crash the server like I did. Just my thinking on this until a better answer comes out but since it happened to two of us in the past few days I think it's pretty easy to point a finger at an update and not an install issue.

[Vlk]

Have you customized any of avast's settings? E.g. moving the Standard Shield's sensitivity to High?

[coastlinetech]

I beleive I set some of them to high.  I went back in set all to normal for all client settings.  I'll watch things and see if it changes.

I also get ADNM crash messages at the console when I log on sometimes.  Not sure if it is all related or not.    Just for clarity, the SBS 2003 box only has ADNM on it, it does not run any AV resident protections.

[Vlk]

Setting Standard Shield sensitivity to High can indeed have negative impact on performance. It basically turns on scanning of ALL files on write - which is especially terrible for files such as logs or INI files - that are written very, VERY often (each save triggers a new scan, and if the file is big, it basically kills the machine).


Thanks
Vlk

[coastlinetech]

My clients problems were errors and application crashes (lacert Tax and a VB/MS Access based payroll program), data write failers and corrupted MDB files along with slowdowns.  Setting things to normal only fixed some problems.  However, I beleive I've found the fix.  I turned off the scan created/modified files under Standard shield -> Scanner (advanced).  This stopped the remaining crashes (so far).  Since I could not edit the default list of extentions to remove MDB I just disabled this setting and all is well again.   

I left the "Scan files on open" option checked but I have not added any extenstions to the list.   

Aside from the crashes, things are running much faster for their apps, faster then this morning.  As long as the crashes go away, they will be happy and I can keep evaluating Avast.