Making Avast Use Less Resources

[stevey]

Ok thanks for clearing that up for me, David.

[DavidR]

You're welcome.

[LorenzoC]

They're not overlapping at the default settings. Use Standard Shield at Normal sensitivity and keep the other providers to protect specific issues in the computer. avast is not a suite.

This is exactly what I don't get well. I tried to look better at each provider but, since the "standard shield" covers already the "on-access" mode, whatever the other providers do, the "standard shield" stops the threats when they (the files) are accessed, so it looks like all the providers are "overlapping" the "standard shield". Ok I can suppose the "web shield" intercept the threat before the "standard shield", as soon as the file is loaded in memory versus when the system tries to write the file on the disk. But unless the range of detected threats is different depending on the provider, in my poor understanding the providers are redundant. Like I said, I need to save resources and that is the reason why I stripped AVAST to the bare minimum.

About the "suite", maybe it is the wrong description for a group of specialized services but I don't know how to describe it better.

Regards.

[DavidR]

The other providers (Web Shield, Internet Mail, P2P, Instant Messaging, Network Shield) for the most parts are scanning outside content to stop it from getting on your system in the first place. So if they catch it the standard shield doesn't get a look in, if it gets past those it might even get past the standard shield as the detections are based on the same signatures.

So the other providers are based on prevention where the standard shield is effectively dealing with those on the system. Prevention is much easier than cure, once a file gets on your system it may well be much harder to remove.

[LorenzoC]

So if they catch it the standard shield doesn't get a look in, if it gets past those it might even get past the standard shield as the detections are based on the same signatures.

But this works in the opposite direction as well, if the detection range is the same, the Standard Shield would detect the same threats as the specialized providers. If the Standard Shield stops threats (the same threats the other providers can detect) to be written, read, executed and whatever meaningful else, It looks like the Standard Shield is pretty much all I need to stay safe. If it fails, the other providers would fail as well...

But I don't have much choices, If I run all the providers I get too many resources used plus the performance of several functions are degraded, like browsing the web. Ok it isn't that much but still it is visible on an old system. My reasoning is the level of higher protection I get from the providers (it seems zero for the above reasons) versus the resources consumed (that are way above zero).

I don't want to criticize AVAST design, probably it is the coolest thing ever when you don't have to worry about few megabytes of RAM or CPU cycles.

[DavidR]

I guess you missed the bit about once on your system they can be difficult to remove, in use, protected, hidden by rootkit, etc. you system your choice.

If you haven't got the RAM you could always upgrade it, RAM is reasonably inexpensive at the moment assuming you can find some that matches your old hardware. You don't mention how much RAM you have or what CPU on your system.

[LorenzoC]

My system is a PIII 500 with 256M of RAM, Win2K SP4.

It works not bad with AVAST full install and all the providers but I (being dumb probably) don't get how the providers increase the system protection since they detect the same things as the Standard Shield. All the possible threats must be written, accessed or executed on my system before they become dangerous. It doesn't look like the providers can detect something that Standard Shield misses.
So at the end I think it is not worth it loading all the providers in exchange of the gain in protection.

[DavidR]

Lets assume that you have an undetected trijan on your system it is free to download more malware, we see examples of this in the forums where the web shield block content before it is downloaded. That same malware could also try to protect what it downloads when it arrives on your system.

Currently in the forums there is one Topic where avast reports a warning/error that it can't scan the file because access is denied http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=35484.0 (are you getting the picture), so avast can't scan it, certainly not when it is established on the system, so preventing it getting on to the system is far better than dealing with it when it is on your system.