Hi all,
Having an issue with Zoom and AvastUI (the user interface, NOT the service).
Zoom 6.0.11
Avast Free 24.4.6112 (build 24.4.9067.838)
Avast UI 1.0.808
I'm trying to help my sister long distance, so trying suggestions might take some time:
My sister teaches online most days using Zoom, and she is having great difficulty with AvastUI.exe taking large amounts of CPU for extended periods. Combined with Zoom's own CPU use, this sometimes causes her calls to momentarily drop out or even to terminate.
She first noticed the problem about 10 days ago after she updated Zoom from 6.0.4 to 6.0.10 (a significant update). She is now on 6.0.11 (a minor update). She has been on Avast Free 24.4 the entire time.
[Zoom seems to issue a new update every few days, so I don't know how long this situation will remain.]
Monitoring with ProcessExplorer, CPU usage when AvastUI is minimized normally is negligible: much less than 1%. However when on a Zoom call, she has seen AvastUI go to ~20% for several minutes at a time, spike occasionally to 40+% for a few minutes at a time, and repeat this behavior over and over again.
Note that there are multiple instances of AvastUI: the one that misbehaves always is the root (first) instance. In all cases, AvastUI is remaining minimized (in the tray) - the user is NOT manipulating it.
I have been able partly to replicate this behavior on my own system and it does seem to involve running Zoom. I have monitored AvastUI for many hours at a time over several days now, and without Zoom running nothing strange happens ... but just start Zoom and within several minutes AvastUI jumps to ~20% CPU and stays there for several minutes. I personally have NOT seen significant periods of CPU above 20%, but my sister says that while Zoom is screen sharing, on her system AvastUI often spikes to 40+% and stays there for a few minutes at a time.
I have seen on my own system that simply starting Zoom and leaving it idle causes a period of high CPU in AvastUI within several minutes ... but after the initial burst of activity, high CPU does not recur unless a call is made.
An active Zoom call does cause AvastUI's high CPU behavior to recur periodically until the call completes: several minutes of high CPU then several minutes of "normal" negligible CPU. Between calls with Zoom remaining open but idle, AvastUI's CPU use is negligible.
Initially I had thought this odd behavior might be caused by Zoom's screen sharing somehow tricking AvastUI into thinking the user was manipulating it. But then I saw the behavior occur on the 1st call following reboot with no screen sharing, and then again with Zoom just opened and sitting idle (no calls made). So now I'm stumped.
I know in the past there have been some CPU issues with AvastUI. I personally have never seen anything until now. But this now is affecting my sister's ability to work, so I'm hoping someone here has some ideas. If we can't tame Avast pretty quickly, she may have to stop using it.
We have tried exempting the Zoom executables and Zoom meeting URLs without success. [I didn't really expect this to help as the exemptions should affect only the service (which is behaving itself). But I tried anyway.]
Thanks for any thoughts,
George
