Comcast says Avast slows page loads??

[ag2g]

After 4 months of troubleshooting, Comcast discovered that one of the 7 processes in my Home edition (free) v.4.7 is causing super slow page loads in both IE7 and Firefox 2.0.0.8. I have 3ghz/2gb RAM running Vista Ultimate Home with avast, zone alarm (free) v.7.1.078.000 and Comcast Cable testing with 21mb download speeds. For a while I thought it was just Vista, and reinstalled it only to find the same issues. On average, page loads were taking 15-20 sec.s each on both browsers. If I turn off Avast, everything flies. I think I have narrowed it down to turning off the Web Shield component, but it seems to be too important of a feature to lose. Is there a known bug with a fix for this? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to give up avast!

[Lisandro]

Zone Alarm is the culprit here...
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=31185.msg259127#msg259127

I see no other way then changing the firewall.
ZoneLabs is not well-known for correcting bugs and issues, on contrary, they could even acknowledge them...

[ag2g]

I disagree. When I disabled Zone Alarm, there was no difference in speed. i only notice the issue when Web Shield is enabled. I've uninstalled, downloaded and reinstalled a fresh copy of avast and get the same thing.

[Lisandro]

I disagree. When I disabled Zone Alarm, there was no difference in speed.

The low level driver is loaded. Disabling is not enough.

[ag2g]

'The low level driver is loaded. Disabling is not enough.' Sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean for me to just replace zone alarm because of this ( i understood that from the thread you linked to earlier) or is the low level driver referring to avast? Thank you!

[sded]

I already had Avast! running fine under Vista Ultimate when I added ZoneAlarm.  Everything slowed down significantly.  Uninstalled ZoneAlarm completely and used Vista Firewall; slowdown went away.  Now that Comodo Firewall Pro is in very late Beta for Vista, installed Comodo 3.0.10.  Very stable firewall, free, no slowdown.  Has a lot of ZoneAlarm features only found in Pro, plus some other stuff for firewall afficianados, but easy to use with good initial settings.  Or wait until Hell freezes over for Checkpoint to update ZoneAlarm for Vista enough.

[DavidR]

I disagree. When I disabled Zone Alarm, there was no difference in speed. i only notice the issue when Web Shield is enabled. I've uninstalled, downloaded and reinstalled a fresh copy of avast and get the same thing.

It takes two to tango so if there is a conflict remove one and no problem/conflict, had you removed ZA there would have been no conflict.

Did you actually read the link that Tech posted as one of the avast developers has found the fault to be in ZA.

Let's start with jc3131's problem. That's the easier one. Simply put, there's a bug in the Vista version of ZoneAlarm that is preventing the avast webshield provider from working properly.

Previously there was a compatibility in ZA Pro with the web shield, Alwil even reported it to ZoneLabs but they didn't fix that either so avast had to introduce the compatibility dialogue when ZA was found.

Those who have tried a different firewall have found the problem goes just as soon as ZA goes, as sded mentioned.

Other than that the ZA Free is crippled as far as outbound protection goes in the hope you eill upgrade to the pro version. In the Program Control, configuration area, the slider will only goes as far as Medium protection, if you want more you have to buy the Pro version. That alone would be enough for me to seek better protection.

[rdmaloyjr]

ag2g,
Many find PC Tools Firewall Plus (FREE) to work very well.
There is a link to it in my sig.

[Lisandro]

Do you mean for me to just replace zone alarm because of this ( i understood that from the thread you linked to earlier)

Unfortunately, yes. Or you must live with the delay, or you must disable WebShield.

or is the low level driver referring to avast?

No. The low level driver (network driver, small piece of software loaded at boot) of ZoneAlarm.

[lukor]

Hello friends,
as a developer of the WebShield component in avast! I feel somewhat offended by this issue!

It is NOT a compatibility conflict between avast! and Zone Alarm. This is simply a very severe performance bug in the Zone Alarm network driver.

Two software features might be in a compatibility conflict if they both do something correctly but fail to work together.
In this particular bug, the thing that Zone Alarm is doing is a delay of 3 seconds on every incoming connection, regardless of the fact if avast! is installed or not. The delay occurs even on the localhost only connection that don't ever leave your network card.

Yes, avast! uses incoming connections and therefore it is affected by this delay. So is any TCP server on your machine, any HTTP proxy based application, your SPAM eleminator, your network shares, your SQL server or your real-time nuclear reactor monitoring console. The only thing they need to do to be affected by this is to provide some functionality to other users on your network, other applications on your PC or simply to other components of itself via TCP/IP.

I am sure Zone Labs will fix this it is really a big bug and I only don't understand how this slipped through their Q/A department. Please, watch for new versions.

Cheers,
Lukas.

[DavidR]

It is NOT a compatibility conflict between avast! and Zone Alarm. This is simply a very severe performance bug in the Zone Alarm network driver

I totally agree that it isn't a compatibility issue and as far as I see it had the avast installation not popped-up a Compatibility dialogue then it would not really have stuck in peoples minds that it is some form of compatibility issue.

http://www.avast.com/eng/webshield_issues.html#idt_6869

I think this leads some to believe this issue of slow page loads is somehow the same compatibility issue when it is entirely different.

[Lisandro]

I am sure Zone Labs will fix this it is really a big bug and I only don't understand how this slipped through their Q/A department. Please, watch for new versions.

Thanks Lukas. Unfortunately, this is not the first time... we lost faith on Zone Labs.