Bit of a noob question, which probably has an obvious answer but...

[REDACTED]

Avast is using up buckets of processing power on my (underpowered) laptop's cpu. Now I've been to multiple webpages which say that you can go to settings and choose to lower the priority of the scan, thereby increasing performance. But when I go to settings I see nothing of the sort. My options are

General
Active Protection
Update
Registration
Tools
Troubleshooting
About Avast

Could anyone offer any advice for how to find the performance option/lower Avast's cpu usage?

Thanks

[Para-Noid]

GUI>Scan>Scan for Viruses>select scan from drop down menu>scan settings

[Pondus]

Avast is using up buckets of processing power on my (underpowered) laptop's cpu.

do you have any other security programs running?

Now I've been to multiple webpages which say that you can go to settings and choose to lower the priority of the scan, thereby increasing performance.

Is this what you are looking fore?  http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83361-priority-level-set-applications-processes.html

[DavidR]

@ Booster Gold
Processing power should also be related to what you have running as avast doesn't go off on its own. As a resident (on-access) antivirus scanner it scans activity. It doesn't just scan for no reason, it is activity based.

When does this happen ?

What is using the resources and how much ?

What is your Operating System, CPU and RAM ?

[Para-Noid]

I thought of something else to check, does your Win7 have virtual technology?
If so you may have NG installed and that could raise CPU usage during start-up.
If this high CPU usage is random check out the link David provided.