hi mrjohncougar,
As you can see XP Pro resides here.
In order, for the attached .jpegs below:
- No Browser Running; Avast memory usage.
- Browser Running
- Firefox Memory Usage
Initial memory usage for Avast! for both AvastUI.exe and AvastSvc.exe on initial internet connection (just connected) was 44,036 Kb. At this time many things are going on, such as Avast was looking for the latest virus database update, firewall was looking for an update, and other processes were connecting to the internet. Avast! monitors all these connections, and I have seen as many as 200+ internet connections when the internet connection starts up via my firewall.
All expressions used are kilobytes and megabytes or
Kb and
Mb respectively.
Breakdown for the above was: AvastSvc.exe (38,852 Kb) and AvastUI.exe (5,184 Kb) or a total of
44,036 Kb.Once the update checks are done, and the browser I use is loaded, I normally see around 20+ connections, and the memory usage by both avast services goes down slightly. Here, the combined total for the two is
32,068 Kb.With the internet still connected, but no browser running, I have
26,504 Kb.
Note also I have up to 56 processes running at a time. All of them are standard Windows default services or start up processes for the most part. At first boot from a cold boot, I will see 50+ processes running, some of these are due to necessary third-party start ups such as Avast! and the firewall.
As I can see, the amount of memory used by Avast! varies depending on what this system is doing at that moment.
To translate into MB, highest was 43.00390625 Mb, middle was 31.31640625 Mb, lowest was 25.8828125 Mb. This is normal usage, no slowdowns of any kind happen on this machine, but then again, I have 2 GB memory available.
Only AvastUI.exe and AvastSvc.exe are used to run Avast! protection and are responsible for most of the memory footprint you will find on any Windows system running Avast!
Firefox alone, when running, uses 161,132 Kb or 157.35546875 Mb on my system, way more than Avast! has ever used. FF is a memory hog, no question about it.
As DavidR said, 70-100 Mb usage by Avast! is not normal. I'd look into seeing what your browsers are doing and what add-ons you are running in them that may slow them down. Avast! has to cover the browser and whatever it runs; it is doing it's job when it does that.
EDIT: You might also want to look into the infamous DMA bug XP is known for, where the Windows hard drive setting gets changed from DMA (faster) to PIO (slower). Don't ask why it happens, it just does sometimes.