Author Topic: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.  (Read 16616 times)

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Pishaw

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Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« on: July 10, 2012, 07:29:59 PM »
I have two machines, one is dual boot with Win 7 x64 and Win 8 x64. The other is Win 7 x32. All three with Avast Free 7.0.1456. I have noticed over the last several weeks that the Win 7 x64 machine takes a long time to boot, that it 'hangs' on the "Welcome"screen for like two minutes, then goes to the desktop BUT the HDD is busy for another three minutes. So it takes the Win 7 x64 machine like five minutes to become usable. At that point it works normally. I can't pinpoint exactly when but it seems like the machine has booted slow since Avast v. 7.

The dual boot machine is a Dell Studio 1737, and the Win 7 x32 is an older dual core Toshiba with a gig of memory.

The Win 8 and Win 7 x32 machines boot normally, from cold off to ready in less that 60 seconds. After a little Googleing last night, I uninstalled Avast from the Win 7 x64 machine. Guess what it can do now? That's right, it boots from cold in less that 60 seconds. From what I've gathered, this seems to affect Win 7 x64 machines only, but obviously not all of them.

Before we go any further, let me say I have the computer plugged in, I haven't had it in the shower, I haven't hit it with a hammer. I'm fairly literate, and have checked the usual suspects that cause slow booting. Did the uninstall/reinstall of Avast, and still slow boot. But after uninstalling Avast and replacing it with MSE it boots like it should.

I've been using Avast since version 4. I don't like NOT using it, but it conflicts with my machine in some way. But just Win 7 x64. On the same dual boot Dell, Win 8 works fine, so it is Win 7 x64 specific. I hope y'all are able to work this out.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2012, 07:32:28 PM by Pishaw »

Hellion

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2012, 05:18:25 PM »
Hi Pishaw,

I'm just a forum user here.

Maybe try narrow it down a little?

Maybe permanently disable the shields one by one and restart each time to determine which shield is causing it.

I have a feeling it's the file shield...

Yoshi2889

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #2 on: July 12, 2012, 05:21:04 PM »
I'd suggest to do a scan, maybe malware is running at startup or so.

Also clear your startup programs, and perhaps do a defrag, with Defraggler or Diskeeper or something like that. (both of those help a lot with slow boot times here)

Pishaw

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2012, 08:12:08 PM »
Nope. None of that. No malware, no viruses, nothing wrong with the machine. After I removed Avast, it works fine. That kinda narrows it down, right?

And I'm not the only one. I'm seeing EXACTLY the same problem that I had from other people with Win 7 x64.

Look, I've been loyal to Avast for a decade. I've installed it on other peoples computers that I have worked on. I've recommended it to people that ask my opinion. But I'm not going to spend an entire afternoon troubleshooting someone elses software. My problem is fixed. And it's not a cult.

When they figure it out, maybe I'll come back. But the advice I've seen dispensed on this site, by people whose screen name identifies them as an 'Avast! Evangelist', is many times usless and insulting. Much of it seems to be geared towards "what have you done wrong." Things like "uninstall/reinstall it AGAIN." "You must have a virus on you computer." I posted here after working on the problem on my own for almost two weeks. I KNOW there is nothing wrong with my machine, and I KNOW that Avast was the problem, and I KNOW others are having exactly the same problem I had. And I thought I made that clear. I don't want to be told I've done something wrong. This is a company run website, with people posting advice that have the company name in their screen name. Most people would take that as they are representatives of Avast. I do. When the first response is to defend the product, it's not customer service. I have yet to see "we're aware of it and are working HARD on a fix. Hang in there. Here's what to do in the mean time." This seems to be such an obvious response that the fact no one is saying that makes me question the entire operation.

Calling a customer wrong is what I'd expect from a company that sells overpriced devices to rabidly brand-loyal devotees. I expect more from Avast.

Offline Jake1121

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2012, 09:08:10 PM »
Just FYI, I opened a ticket on this very issue.  I requested a fix, not simply instructions to uninstall/reinstall manually what an auto-update caused.  Here is the answer I received today:

Dear ---------,
The reinstallation should fix it.
Best Regards

Hellion

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2012, 09:19:13 AM »
Hi Pishaw,

I'm not an Avast Evangelist and there has not been an Evangelist response to your thread.

Just calm down a bit, I'm trying to pin point the issue so we can file a bug report and not just say "my avast is slowing down my pc"

I have not come across this issue yet and I have also been with avast for a long time and I have done hundreds of installations as a tech.

There must be a reason why some win7 x64 installations are affected and others are not.

I'm unable to recreate the problem that's why you need to provide the info.

Please try permanently disabling the shields and restart to see which one it is, starting with the file shield.

If none of these are causing it, try disabling auto sandbox...

Offline CraigB

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2012, 09:42:43 AM »
Just FYI, I opened a ticket on this very issue.  I requested a fix, not simply instructions to uninstall/reinstall manually what an auto-update caused.  Here is the answer I received today:

Dear ---------,
The reinstallation should fix it.
Best Regards
Well a clean reinstall is the fix.

SafeSurf

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #7 on: July 13, 2012, 11:00:04 AM »
But the advice I've seen dispensed on this site, by people whose screen name identifies them as an 'Avast! Evangelist', is many times usless and insulting. Much of it seems to be geared towards "what have you done wrong."

<snip> I have yet to see "we're aware of it and are working HARD on a fix. Hang in there. Here's what to do in the mean time." This seems to be such an obvious response that the fact no one is saying that makes me question the entire operation.

Sure the Evangelists could offer you help, but you insulted us in your post for no reason at all since we hadn't had a chance to even post.  We do not blame users or insult them; in fact we try to help them in any way possible.

As for your second comment after the "snip," you obviously haven't read all the threads because there have been plenty of posts where the Avast Team and Evangelists have stated that they are working on a fix, or the problem will be fixed with the next update or release, etc.

Your post comes across as being very defensive yet we are here to help if you want it.   There are other suggestions I can offer to assist you, but until you are ready to accept help, I cannot offer it and be insulted at the same time.

Yoshi2889

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2012, 11:50:22 AM »
I've been happily running Win7 X64 on my laptop now and haven't had a single problem where Avast! was involved. So it does seem to affect only a few machines.

As suggested twice, *do* try a reinstall, even if you don't want to/don't think that will solve it. That's the fix they gave you. As SafeSurf said, people around here are willing to help you, and so they try to do, but if you don't accept it...
« Last Edit: July 13, 2012, 11:52:31 AM by Yoshi2889 »

TIGERLAD

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #9 on: July 14, 2012, 02:54:00 AM »
Have today said goodbye to Avast IS even though I have 6 months usage remaining. This programme has been a pain since update from version 6. Slow boot time was driving me to distraction and clean install (this appears to be the answer for all ills) did NOT SOLVE THE ISSUE. Have temporarily loaded MS security and boot time is back to 60 seconds. Avast is by far the worst anti virus programme I have used. 

Pishaw

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #10 on: July 14, 2012, 04:28:23 AM »
OK. Hold on, everyone. I didn't call any of you out by name, and I'm not saying any of the 'Avast Evangelists' were posting insulting comments or advice here. But I've read many of the threads here the last few days, and I have seen it. So have you. The solution to everything can't ALWAYS be uninstall/reinstall/ EVERY time, can it?  C'mon now.

I get how hard this sort of thing is. You've got people that don't have their computers plugged in saying Avast made their screen go black. And they seem to think you did it, on purpose. I understand how difficult it is to deal with the general public, I really do. It is worth pointing out that y'all handle yourselves largely very professionally, more so than the average person would in the same context.

I think you'd have to admit there are more problems than normal with release 7.0.1456. I've seen a couple of threads on the Avast site about the same issue I have, and many more other places. And I see a lot of people having issues with Outlook, for example. Now it's understandable if there was a conflict with, like, Zork. But Outlook? Office is almost universal. If there's a conflict with Outlook, it's a major problem. Right?

Also, I didn't come here with questions. I did my own troubleshoot/bootscan/uninstall/reinstall/troubleshoot some more/uninstall some more before I got here. I figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. I'm OK. I just wanted to post exactly the problem I was having so that A) It was brought to your attention, and B) If anyone was wondering why it took their machine so long to boot lately, they might say "Yo, that's the same thing I have."

At any rate, thank you for your effort. I'll keep checking back for the next update.

marziano_mork

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #11 on: July 14, 2012, 05:23:01 AM »
I'm on a win7 x64 machine and the only solution that works for me is to disable 'reputation services'.

Yoshi2889

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #12 on: July 14, 2012, 11:22:25 PM »
Have today said goodbye to Avast IS even though I have 6 months usage remaining. This programme has been a pain since update from version 6. Slow boot time was driving me to distraction and clean install (this appears to be the answer for all ills) did NOT SOLVE THE ISSUE. Have temporarily loaded MS security and boot time is back to 60 seconds. Avast is by far the worst anti virus programme I have used.
Well then, it was worth trying wasn't it? Now you can at least tell us that that didn't solve it, instead of coming in later saying "Oh heck that did indeed solve it."

OK. Hold on, everyone. I didn't call any of you out by name, and I'm not saying any of the 'Avast Evangelists' were posting insulting comments or advice here. But I've read many of the threads here the last few days, and I have seen it. So have you. The solution to everything can't ALWAYS be uninstall/reinstall/ EVERY time, can it?  C'mon now.
A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P

Quote
I get how hard this sort of thing is. You've got people that don't have their computers plugged in saying Avast made their screen go black. And they seem to think you did it, on purpose. I understand how difficult it is to deal with the general public, I really do. It is worth pointing out that y'all handle yourselves largely very professionally, more so than the average person would in the same context.
There is no cure for idiots and people who don't investigate stuff before asking stuff; it's just the way it is, sorry :(

Quote
I think you'd have to admit there are more problems than normal with release 7.0.1456. I've seen a couple of threads on the Avast site about the same issue I have, and many more other places. And I see a lot of people having issues with Outlook, for example. Now it's understandable if there was a conflict with, like, Zork. But Outlook? Office is almost universal. If there's a conflict with Outlook, it's a major problem. Right?
I have no idea, Avast has always been working fine for me. Conflicting with a big program indeed can be a problem.

Quote
Also, I didn't come here with questions. I did my own troubleshoot/bootscan/uninstall/reinstall/troubleshoot some more/uninstall some more before I got here. I figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. I'm OK. I just wanted to post exactly the problem I was having so that A) It was brought to your attention, and B) If anyone was wondering why it took their machine so long to boot lately, they might say "Yo, that's the same thing I have."
That's good, thank you for that. If everybody would research a little more (and I"m not pointing fingers) then issues would be solved earlier; the Avast! team can't troubleshoot issues with just "Oh my computer is booting slow, how do I fix this?", they could do much more with "My computer boots slow because process xxx is using xxx CPU usage at startup" or so.

Quote
At any rate, thank you for your effort. I'll keep checking back for the next update.
I'm sorry for the issues that have been occuring on your system, and I hope you'll consider recommending Avast again.

Sorry for making this thread a mess by the way.

marziano_mork: Is that a service in Windows, or a setting in Avast?

Offline Jake1121

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Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #13 on: July 15, 2012, 04:40:05 PM »
A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P

Corruupt files/config from where?  I updated Avast! IS using the prompt in the UI.  Duh, apparently that was user mistake #1 because that is when the problems started.  Immediately, the first reboot after the install (which I was of course prompted to do) resulted in the Windows Startup Screen hanging so long that I thought Windows was hosed.  Instead of panicking, I waited, and waited and waited...for minutes (does it matter if its 3, 4 or 5?).  Then finally, a complete start up.

Now I'm told the "fix" is to uninstall all previous versions of Avast! using a combination of some tool and the Windows uninstaller (apparently I need to run something for each previous version I have upgraded from in the past 2 years?  how is that done?).  Then I install, what most likely is the same thing that the auto-upgrade installed (minus the corruption?).  And hopefully at that point I have nothing broken.  Of course if something is broken, then it must be user mistake #2 and I should perform the procedure again. 

Since the Avast! update I have had a horrible boot time.  And on one occasion during boot I received a message saying Windows Explorer failed!  Luckily, Windows Explorer tried to restart itself and was successful.  On two other occasions FF13 could not be used while Avast! was running.  IE was fine, but not FF - which would only run in "safe mode".

There will never be a REAL fix to this will there?  You know, one where you update in the exact method that the Software's provider has given to you and it actually results in a clean install with no corruption, etc?  Nope, my only recourse is to try following some instructions to be sure I wipe out everything from previous versions in the correct manner and then run the complete new install and hope my license still works and I didn't break anything; because Lord knows it surely isn't the software's fault.



« Last Edit: July 15, 2012, 04:44:15 PM by Jake1121 »

Yoshi2889

  • Guest
Re: Slow Boot Win 7 x64.
« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2012, 12:51:44 AM »
A reinstall of a piece of software gets rid of possible corrupt files, corrupt configuration. I installed Avast today, and it didn't start (sumthing with a configuration thing). Guess what the solution was? A reinstall :P

Corruupt files/config from where?  I updated Avast! IS using the prompt in the UI.  Duh, apparently that was user mistake #1 because that is when the problems started.  Immediately, the first reboot after the install (which I was of course prompted to do) resulted in the Windows Startup Screen hanging so long that I thought Windows was hosed.  Instead of panicking, I waited, and waited and waited...for minutes (does it matter if its 3, 4 or 5?).  Then finally, a complete start up.

Now I'm told the "fix" is to uninstall all previous versions of Avast! using a combination of some tool and the Windows uninstaller (apparently I need to run something for each previous version I have upgraded from in the past 2 years?  how is that done?).  Then I install, what most likely is the same thing that the auto-upgrade installed (minus the corruption?).  And hopefully at that point I have nothing broken.  Of course if something is broken, then it must be user mistake #2 and I should perform the procedure again. 

Since the Avast! update I have had a horrible boot time.  And on one occasion during boot I received a message saying Windows Explorer failed!  Luckily, Windows Explorer tried to restart itself and was successful.  On two other occasions FF13 could not be used while Avast! was running.  IE was fine, but not FF - which would only run in "safe mode".

There will never be a REAL fix to this will there?  You know, one where you update in the exact method that the Software's provider has given to you and it actually results in a clean install with no corruption, etc?  Nope, my only recourse is to try following some instructions to be sure I wipe out everything from previous versions in the correct manner and then run the complete new install and hope my license still works and I didn't break anything; because Lord knows it surely isn't the software's fault.
Updates by far aren't that smooth as fresh installs. Things may screw up. I've seen this happen a crapton of times with SMF, the stuff suddenly breaks after an update.