4GB of RAM in a 32bit OS is a bit of a waste and overkill to my mind, since the OS can only physically address in the region of 3GB and to that you also have to add any memory on a dedicated graphics card.
@ hiyanett
Your system spec is well up to the task (much higher than some who don't appear to have this problem you are), whilst having more RAM, 1 or 2 GB would make the system much more responsive overall.
The XP OS I think had a minimum requirement of 256MB RAM (and that minimum IMHO is greatly underestimated) when you start adding other application to your system then that overall minimum RAM would have to increase or there would be much hard disk thrashing as information is transferred to and from the swapfile/pagefile and this also slows your system during memory intensive activity (boot/scans/updates, etc.).
So I would recommend you get at least 1GB and preferably 2GB, not just because of this but to improve overall system performance.
With XP avast is able to restrict the amount of CPU% activity the auto update uses, that would be slightly negated by the amount of RAM. So I would suggest that you delay the auto update check, giving the boot time to finish before putting any more stress on the system, see below.
I would also suggest that you check what is allowed to start on boot, that should be essential applications, normally, system and security applications, to further reduce the load. Many programs when you install them set themselves to run on boot, media players in particular are bad for this when you only need them to run when you click on a media file, it starts the associated player.
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You need to edit (using notepad) the
[InetWD] section of the C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Data\avast4.ini file and add the following line the Bold lines below:
Broadband connections, add this line:
AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=120[InetWD]
AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=120
When complete save the changes, avast's self-defence module will ask for confirmation, etc. answer Yes.
The above figure is seconds and the above equates to two minutes, you could try that and adjust upwards if required, 180, 240, etc. It may be better based on your system to start of with a figure of 300 (5 minutes), this will give your system plenty of time to stabilise.