AVAST ON WIN 98 - ERROR??

[hlecter]

After installing Avast on Win 98, I have observed the following odd behaviour:

I start the splash-screen e.g. by clicking the Avast-icon. The splash-screen loads and the memory is scanned. The cpu is high, of course.

When the memory-scanning has finished, the cpu-usage stays high without me doing anything (around 65%).  (On my XP it drops to zero.)

I have also observed that when repeating this with the other skin in the installation package, the same happens, but cpu-usage drops to around 20% and stays there after the memory scanning.

With these two skins, minimizing them will not reduce cpu-usage.

My workaround is to use Avast on win 98 without any skin. Then the cpu-usage drops to zero after splash-screen/memory testing and stays there. 

Have to add that I like this unskinned simple user interface very well.
I just find what happens when using a skin very strange.

Is this a bug?, or is it just me.

[Lisandro]

Which is your firewall?
Do you have (or had in the past) any other antivirus is this computer?
Any other security program?

[hlecter]

Hi Tech;

Thanks for your interest and congrats with new forum-title.  

ZA is my firewall.

Yes, I had Norton, but it is properly removed, rnav2003, manual check of registry etc...

I did a scan with standard skin on and then a scan with simple user interface(skinless). The condidtions were quite alike, but the last scan took half the time of the first scan. Looks to me as a skin problem.   

[igor]

I find it quite unlikely that the skin had anything to do with that.
How did you check the CPU usage? Please try to find out what process exactly is causing the CPU load (e.g. using a tool like Process Explorer, or similar).

[hlecter]

Igor:

I have reinstalled Avast on my 98-machine after taking a clear image back.

The measurements I did mention were from Norton utilities.

I repeated the measurements with process-explorer:

With DEFAULT skin:

While the splash-screen is loading and memory is scanned, ashavast.exe is
using 90 % +/- of cpu.

When splash-screen has finished loading and memory-testing has finished, ashavast.exe stops(0% CPU).

But at this point ashsimpl.exe(Virus scanner) starts using around 65 % CPU and stays there with small dips to 1-2 % now and then.

Repeating this with the SKINLESS Simple user interface shows that when splashscreen has loaded, ash simpl.exe does not come into play with this high CPU.

If this is unclear, it is described in my first post, but now the guilty process is pinpointed.

Nothing of this odd behaviour can be reproduced with Avast on my XP-machine.

Thanks for digging into this.

[igor]

Please check program settings / Appearance page - "Use translucent effects"... is it enabled? Does it help if you disable it?

[hlecter]

No, it's not enabled, and can't be enabled either. It is greyed out and it says requires w2000 or higher. 

We have to dig deeper. 

The only thing that helps is to use the skinless simple user interface. Then no extra CPU-usage. This is strange, and if I use the other skin in installation package, the CPU usage drops to 20%.
This must be related to the skin in some way.

We could have hoped that someone could reproduce this on W98.

If no solution, I can stick with skinless interface. 

[igor]

Ah yes, sorry, I forgot that it's not available on Win9x anyway.
That's really strange... if ashSimpl.exe isn't doing anything (such as scanning), it shouldn't cause any high CPU usage, of course. I must say I don't know what could be causing this...
Did you try some other skins, except for the default one?

[hlecter]

Igor:

As I said in my last post, the other skin in installation package gives me 20% cpu-usage at most.

I have downloaded more skins, and the "winner" is a Vista theme made by Sasha(I think). It drops to 11 %. The "looser" is the default skin with around 65%. (PIII, 450 Mhz, 128 MB ram).

I have all the time believed it must have some connection with the skins.
My last thought was my diplay driver.
But there is no improvement minimizing the skins, either.
Ashsimpl.exe must be doing something here.

Thanks