Avast humping HDD

[treloar1000]

What is normal I/O to HDD for reads/writes?

For me Avast I/O reads is 400,000+ and writes is 258,000+

I notice whenever my system is really crawling along that the avast icon is animated, so I know Avast is doing something and my HDD activity is ridiculous to the point of making my system unusable for 10 - 15 minutes.

[DavidR]

Well the avast icon only rotates when it is scanning something and it doesn't scan of its own volition as it is an on access scanner. So there would appear to be some activity on your system that is accessing files to warrant avast to scan them.

HDD activity on both my XP Pro desktop and win7 netbook is minimal.

What version of avast are you using latest 9.0.2008 ?
What operating system ?
What other applications do you have running in the background when this is happening (defragmenting, indexing, P2P, etc. etc.) ?

[treloar1000]

I am using Vista Ultimate 64 bit.
The main things I use this PC for are browsing the web and photoshop.

I am using the free version of Avast 8.0.1497

The only background programs I have running are Refreshlock (keeps my refresh rate at 75hz) and ControlCenter3 (for my Brother printers).

I understand about Avast scanning, but it seems to get to the point it takes over my system completely and sometimes it locks up the PC so bad I get a BSOD.

[DavidR]

I'm not familiar with either of these background processes or how they might interact with avast or rather how avast might interact with them.

That is the point if there is no activity then avast shouldn't be scanning and that is what is strange about this. When the avast icon is rotating what does the task manager show for CPU and RAM usage in relation to avast and other programs, order the processes by CPU % column heading. I suspect that although the icon may be rotating there isn't much happening.

How long has this been happening for ?
Presumably it isn't something that has been the same since installing avast.

[treloar1000]

I'd been putting up with it for 12+ months, as I have other computers to use, I use them if I get too annoyed with this system.

CPU usage is low when this is going on, but the RAM usage can be high with Avast using 510+ MB of my RAM (normally uses 80MB) whereas the only other process that uses a similar amount of RAM is a Windows process.

Initially everything was fine, nothing new installed in 4 years, don't have this problem on other systems set-up with similar software, but don't use Avast on those systems.

When the Avast icon is doing it's thing I can really hear the HDD being worked over.

Bought myself a Samsung 512 GB SSD recently, was considering to move to it for a nice performance boost, but really wanna sort any issue's out first before doing so.

[DavidR]

What did you have before avast and how did you remove it ?
Remnants of a previous AV can still have an impact if low level drivers are still involved. If you had a previous AV all remnants of this should be removed before doing anything else, it may resolve the issue.

I would suggest you try a clean reinstall of avast, whether this is the time to go for the latest avast version or not would be your choice. But to retain avast 8 you would need to source a copy from somewhere like FileHippo.

- Download the latest version of avast, 9.0.2008 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn't save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.

- Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, avastclear.exe find it here and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for all versions).

• 1. Now uninstall avast! - using Programs & Features, if you can't do that  start from the next step, reboot.
• 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility, it will request it be run from safe mode (and will handle the boot into safe mode),  Select the avast product it is you want to uninstall from the dropdown list (see image, click to expand), once complete reboot into normal mode.
• 3. install the latest version, reboot.

Note: The default install location for avast is C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast.
Note 2. save the copy of avastclear.exe so it can be reused as some users are reporting that after running it, it is self-deleting.
- E:\Images\CapturedScreenPrint\avast9\avastclear-exe_productselection.png

[bobo1]

Check hardware settings for hard drive. If it is running PIO MODE THEN IT WILL CRAWL. Should be in DMA MODE. In device manager advanced settings.

[treloar1000]

Previous anti-virus was a paid version of AVG, after it's licence ran out I used the AVG uninstall utility to remove it, and went to Avast.

I will try a fresh install of Avast and get back to you.

UPDATE: Well I tried the newest version of Avast, still had the problem, reducing Avast scanning from normal to low helped, but it seems the problem I am having is with the web shield.  File system and Mail shield seem to be doing not alot but web shield lists almost half a million scanned objects, is there some way to turn it's sensitivity down?

Personally, I am at the point I am going to un-install Avast forever, cause the web shield is going nuts scanning everything in sight, whilst the File System & Mail Shields do little.  I've tried adding exclusions to the sites being scanned but Avast continues to scan them regardless...

It's very annoying to have my PC lock-up for short periods, cause the web shield is scanning 466,435 objects.

Also to bobo1 the HDD is running Ultra DMA Mode 6