I had deployed Avast in my company's XP-Pro SP2 / 2003 SP1 Server environment of 10 systems & they reported significant slowdowns with network file performance: to the point of removing it on most systems. Further research however appears to have absolved it of guilt: our networking interfaces appear to have been poorly configured in Windows. I found a gamer's tool, TCPOptimizer, which appears to help with the non-gaming situation here. It apparently applies different registry settings that have been documented online over the years, and some others I still don't know about (I had tried a few here when they started having problems).
http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.phpHere's the instructions I devised for running it...
1. Download & run "TCPOptimizer.exe" (the TCP Optimizer link).
2. The slider at the top: if you are at a company office or use a router, bump it up to the max. If you plug in directly to a cable or DSL modem, set it to the maximum speed of your connection.
3. Check "Modify All Network Adapters"
4. Check "Optimal Settings"
5. Click on the "Largest MTU" tab & click "Start:" it will give you an MTU # "you can use."
6. Click on the "General Settings" tab & change the MTU to the new #.
7. Click on "Apply Changes" & allow it to reboot your system when asked.
Hope this helps!
