Avast slows down Email receive on win XP

[ophibi]

Hello
I had avast installed on my computer running win ME and I could not see any significant slow down when I was receiving mail.
I switched to win XP and now Avast slow the receive down a lot.
Is there a solution or this is the way it works on XP?

Thanks
Ophibi

[Starfighter]

What e-mail program are you using?  i.e.  Outlook Express?
Are you using a fast CPU, lots of RAM etc?
Do you have avast set to "high" for resident protection?

You might want to try uninstalling avast, then reinstalling (or use the repair function), and see if that helps.

[S.Z.Craftec]

Hello
I had avast installed on my computer running win ME and I could not see any significant slow down when I was receiving mail.
I switched to win XP and now Avast slow the receive down a lot.
Is there a solution or this is the way it works on XP?

Thanks
Ophibi

Have you uninstalled avast! completely prior upgrading to Windows XP ? (I guess you're talking about exact the same PC station ?) avast! needs to be removed completely, and after successful installation of XP, you need to reinstall avast! from the scratch.

Are you sure your mail scanning provider was enabled at all while you were still  running Windows ME ? It's normal that mail scanning process is slowed down a little bit, but of course not significantly, because avast! is doing some checkings. That of course requires some additional time to perform those tests on your incoming and outgoing mail.

I'm running Windows XP SP2, and I can not spot any huge difference in between mail scanning duration on my fathers PC with Win98 SE and mine (WinXP).

You have to know, that if you use Outloook Express, you need to have INTERNET MAIL PROVIDER enabled. If you use MS OUTLOOK (big difference), then you need to enable OUTLOOK/EXCHANGE provider under avast! On-Access Scanner. See my signature for details...

[Lisandro]

If you're talking about a comparison between downloading emails into Windows Me and XP with avast, notice that in earlier avast versions mail were routed through the localhost (127.0.0.1) and this would pass through very quickly.

In version 4.5 and XP you could see a litte, but very little and insignificant, slower download...  

[ophibi]

I did not upgraded to XP, I installed it from scratch so there is no problem with the win ME, since the Avast installation on the XP is new.
I use - for now - Outlook Express as my mail client.
I have INTERNET MAIL provider enabled, and still I see a big difference between mail downloading with Avast working and downloading when Avast is disabled.
Waiting fore new ideas.
Thanks
Ophibi.

[S.Z.Craftec]

How big difference between mail downloading with and without avast! ?

As we all told you before, it's natural. Mail handling on Windows NT based OSes (XP included) is kinda different than on Windows 98/98SE/ME.

I guess you'll have to get used to it. Also, avast! doesn't support SSL connections, so if you are using one of those, well...

I run Windown XP Professional SP2, all updates, without any problem. No delay in receiving or sending e-mails at all.

If you want, you can post all important info (of course except your e-mail loggin password), so someone may come up with some idea.

Note: in WinXP mail handler doesn't require setting SMTP and POP3 server names as 127.0.0.1 anymore. Mail handling is completely automated. You have to set your mail accounts exactly as if avast! doesn't exist.

[ophibi]

I have a small program that gets the header only of a mail message in my mail box, so I can delete it on server if I want.
If I use Avast - it takes 3 seconds to download the headers of 3 messages, if I turn Avast off it takes less then 1 second.
This is realy slow, and if I have 20 messages then it takes forever.
I also tried to download - without deleting the messages - messages by Outlook Express - once with Avast and once without Avast - and the time difference was huge.
I did not experienced that when I was using the win ME. The times were almost identical.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Ophibi

[S.Z.Craftec]

I just told you one of those ideas... avast! mail handling under Windows XP works different than under Windows 98/98SE and Windows ME. That's why mail scanning consumes little more time... unless you are getting internet connection timeout, everything is completely normal.

I have 5 different e-mail accounts. I feel free to say, no one receives more e-mails than me. My customers sends me more than 50 e-mails every single day, and that's just one of those 5 e-mail accounts covered with avast! mail protection. I never experienced any delay in receiving and/or sending e-mails, whether I use OE or MS Outlook 2003.

If you still think it's not how suppose to be, try repairing avast! installation, or even better, uninstall it completely from your system and install it one more time from the scratch.

Another thing, you still didn't say anything about your e-mail accounts, which e-mail providers you are using services of. Every single information is important. Maybe some of those e-mail providers already have antivirus checking on their servers. That can also drastically decrease download time, especially if those e-mails are being checked twice...  

Also, what's the name of e-mail notification program that you are using ? How did you set all those POP3 server names ? It could be that everything was properly set when you were using it on WinME, but now, you may need to change some settings. Don't forget that under Windows XP you don't need to have 127.0.0.1 instead of original server names... but of course, I already mentioned that in my previous post...

[Lisandro]

This is by design.
In 4.1, it was like: mail client > avast > spam killer > mail server
In 4.5, it's like: mail client > spam killer > avast > mail server

So, if you configure avast to work like old times (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?action=display;board=2;threadid=7913;start=0#msg64228)

You must configure avast4.ini file (See 'Settings' on my signature and follow the description at [MailScanner] section).

[lukor]

Hi gyus, just want to add that although avast 4.5 monitors your connections automaticaly in WinNT/XP (without the need of changing account settings in mail clients), the process of scanning is almost the same. This new method should not be taking longer or shorter than in Windows 98,ME.

[S.Z.Craftec]

Lukor, thanks for the info. It's greatly appreciated.

So, what's ophibi's problem then ? Is it normal behaviour what's happening on his PC or why is he having those troubles with speed ?

[jmrc94]

Just my two cents on this topic.
Also use Windows XP SP2 and Avast 4.5
E-mail retrieving can ve very slow & CPU consuming for me too.. as soon as there are file attachments..
Basically downloading a 3MB e-mail can take a couple of seconds to download @500KB/sec (ADSL) and then I get CPU to 100% for tens' of seconds for Avast to complete scanning of the file..
I'm used to receive short videos (.avi, .mpg etc.) by e-mail and turning Avast down when I know I need to download several MB can save me a lot of time..
On access scanner is much faster !!

Note: using outlook express 6, 512MB of RAM and XP1800+ CPU. e-mail provider is Free.fr

[jacques]

Hi!

I got the same kind of problem since the last program update . I tried this and now it checks for mail as fast as before.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=d0ad3eac7f95b591c289552f3e97621f&topic=12200.0#top