Vista startup/shutdown - slowed more by avast than other AV products?

[alanrf]

I am not yet a user of Vista but one of the folks I support is contemplating buying a new desktop machine that would come with Vista as the OS.

He came across an article on avoiding slowdowns in Vista startup (and shutdown for that matter) that can be found here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=332&tag=nl.e589

The article was specifically critical of AVG and avast in being causes of slowdown compared with other products:

1. Sluggish security software. I hate antivirus software. I hate all-in-one security solutions even more. As it turned out, the slowdown on two systems here was directly attributable to overvigilant security software. On a pair of notebooks, the time before full network access was available was being delayed by 15-60 seconds as file-system drivers and network filters loaded for AVG Antivirus and Avast. I also noticed that shutdowns were taking up to a minute on these two systems. When I replaced these two programs with Nod32 and Windows Live OneCare, respectively, the delays shrunk to 5 seconds or less at startup, and shutdowns returned to a normal 30 seconds or less.

I wonder if any of our Vista and avast users have any experience of trying different AV products with Vista and are able to confirm or refute these comments.

Of course, any comments from the avast team are very welcome too.

[DavidR]

There is another topic on this, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=31737.0, by FWF 27, Nov 2007 that has a couple of posts on it.

[alanrf]

Thanks David.

[dyegge]

I used Avast for a couple years with XP. Last Jan I purchased a new Gateway GT5412 with Vista Home Premium and loaded avast! 4.7.1085 after completely uninstalling McAfee. Everything went fine for a while then my machine began to slow down real bad. First it was when refreshing websites, and eventually even MicroSoft programs I have loaded on the machine started to slow and take forever to load. I'm talking 30-45 seconds even up to a minute just to load a Word file. Even "control/Alt delete" took forever to activate. I did virus scans, system restore, you name it, I tried everything. To make a long story short, I finally tried turning off Windows firewall, no help. I turned off defender, no help. But as soon as I turned off Avast my machine worked fine. I uninstalled Avast TOTALLY and reinstalled it, hoping I had somehow corrupted a file. It was OK for the first day so I loaded the Avast updates and then it started all over again. I'm through fighting with it. I uninstalled it again and my machine is like a new computer with absolutely NO PROBLEMS.  I loaded another antivirus program (Win Live OneCare) and finally I am trouble free. I believe the problem was a conflict between one of the Avast updates and Vista, or maybe the firewall or defender, but I can't be sure.  I post this simply for Gen info.

[Lisandro]

I used Avast for a couple years with XP. Last Jan I purchased a new Gateway GT5412 with Vista Home Premium and loaded avast! 4.7.1085 after completely uninstalling McAfee. Everything went fine for a while then my machine began to slow down real bad. First it was when refreshing websites, and eventually even MicroSoft programs I have loaded on the machine started to slow and take forever to load. I'm talking 30-45 seconds even up to a minute just to load a Word file. Even "control/Alt delete" took forever to activate. I did virus scans, system restore, you name it, I tried everything. To make a long story short, I finally tried turning off Windows firewall, no help. I turned off defender, no help. But as soon as I turned off Avast my machine worked fine. I uninstalled Avast TOTALLY and reinstalled it, hoping I had somehow corrupted a file. It was OK for the first day so I loaded the Avast updates and then it started all over again. I'm through fighting with it. I uninstalled it again and my machine is like a new computer with absolutely NO PROBLEMS.  I loaded another antivirus program (Win Live OneCare) and finally I am trouble free. I believe the problem was a conflict between one of the Avast updates and Vista, or maybe the firewall or defender, but I can't be sure.  I post this simply for Gen info.

Thanks for reporting.
Although I think they will have difficult to troubleshoot this one... it could be anything... avast, Windows Firewall, Windows Defender...