Avast often slows down app launching. After installing Avast, running an app for the very first time is a bit slow. But it is expected on first run, as Avast needs to build its cache to make subsequent runs faster. But after a few hours/a system restart/sometimes a day later, all the apps will again launch slowly. By slow I mean after clicking an app's icon it will take a second or two more to load. It doesn't matter whether it's a popular/signed/unsigned app.
At first, I thought Avast is probably queering the cloud reputation of the app, which may slow down the launching a bit. This is something happens with Trend Micro, but Trend's problem is far worse. A few days ago due to an ISP issue, I had no internet for 4/5 hours. Even then, the apps took longer to load. So it's not internet related. I don't notice any high CPU/disk usage either during this activity.
F-Secure is an AV that has issue with slower app launching of unsigned apps after a signature update, and it causes higher than average CPU & disk activity during the process. So it's easy to see that F-Secure is the culprit. But in Avast's case there's no such thing, yet the app launching is slowed down.
Now, this is not a new issue. I have had this issue for a long time. The issue stopped at the end of last year. I mean, around September/October, maybe. There was no slowdown, but then after the product update of December 2021, the problem appeared again.
I reinstalled it in a newly installed Windows a few days ago, and I confirm the issue is still there. I should add that even doing a deep scan of the whole system doesn't fix this.
I test several AVs and know how each one behaves on my PC. Some other top AVs don't have this particular issue. Even the default Microsoft Defender is fine, specially for popular and signed apps.
The occurrence is a bit random, so I can't particularly tell an exact way to reproduce. And if you are a user who has been using Avast for a long time, you probably won't notice this because you got used to this slowness and think it's a normal thing. For example, Many MS Defender related slowness is not realized by general consumers because of this reason.
To me, it looks like the issue is related to Avast's cache. Could be something else too. The devs would know better.
-Avast Free latest version with/without Firewall
-Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise
-AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
-Ram 16 GB
-OS and Avast is installed in a NVMe M.2 SSD
