Avast!4 home take 5 minutes to start up on NT4.0, also can stall when updating.

[UncleDulgaria]

I am running Avast!4 home on an internet/mail Proxy Server PC that checks incoming/outgoing emails for virus and spam.  The PC is running ProxyPlus (www.proxyplus.cz), version Proxy+ 4.00 (Build #404), on a AMD K6 200MHz with 64Mb RAM, running Windows NT (Service Pack 6), release: 4.0, build: 1381.  ProxyPlus has a plugin for using the Avast engine.  It also has some spam filtering operation.  All operations run as NT service, so no-one needs to be loggged in, this is the usual operation of machine.

The machine runs 24/7 and has been operating perfectly for nearly five years, initially using AVG free, however AVG 7 and up doesn't run on WinNT4 any more, so I have recently changed over to Avast. 
Avast is installed with only network and local protection running (any other services load the PC too much) and anyway the machine doesn't receive e-mails to itself, it only downloads from different POP3 accounts then stores and distributes mail accordingly as personal PCs in our house are turned on and off.

At start up, (wether looged in or not) I get a message about a service not starting, when investigating the Event Log, it is Avast. 

A copy or relevant events from the Event log are given below, these show the PC being stopped and re-started :-

28/02/09,14:34:06,BROWSER,Information,None,8033,N/A,GATEWAY1,The browser has forced an election on network \Device\NetBT_RTL80291 because a master browser was stopped.
28/02/09,14:34:06,EventLog,Information,None,6006,N/A,GATEWAY1,The Event log service was stopped.
28/02/09,14:36:17,EventLog,Information,None,6009,N/A,GATEWAY1,Microsoft (R) Windows NT (R) 4.0 1381 Service Pack 6 Uniprocessor Free.
28/02/09,14:36:17,EventLog,Information,None,6005,N/A,GATEWAY1,The Event log service was started.
28/02/09,14:41:15,Service Control Manager,Error,None,7022,N/A,GATEWAY1,The avast! Antivirus service hung on starting.

You will see that it is almost exactly 5 minutes between event log starting and the Avast service being hung. 

If I monitor the process via ProxyPlus web page interface from another PC, I see initially that the Avast plugin isn't operating, but after about five minutes after starting the ProxyPC, it becomes functional.
Likewise if I use ProxyPC's Windows Control Panel - Services manager, I see that Avast takes 5 minutes to be started by refreshing status screen regularly.

What I believe is happening is that it is then re-started by either service manager or avast itself.

It can also be very slow to update Avast, but we have broadband connection capable of 2Mb download speed.  Sometimes when avast is updating ProxyPlus refuses to accept e-mails, something that is very annoying as it checks updates so regularly.  Avast is not running through the ProxyServer Software, but using the same connection to a Draytec Vigor wired router.

Is there a way to schedule updates to once a day in Avast Home version ?

Any help from the tech guys would be appreciated.

Uncle D

[igor]

I can imagine the amount of RAM memory is a problem here; the virus database grew quite big over the years, and the main avast! service, and especially the updates, may need more than this - so the system starts swapping heavily.

As for the scheduling - I'm afraid it's available only in the Professional version.
You can disable automatic updates and update manually.

[UncleDulgaria]

Thanks for a prompt reply Igor,

It's true that the HDD light is on a lot, indicating swap file activity, but the Avast web site specifies :-

For a computer running Windows® NT® 4.0:
486 Processor, 24MB RAM and 100MB of free hard disk space and Service Pack 3 (or higher) installed.

The questions this raises are :-
1.  Is this with a minimal functionality ?
2.  Why does it fail to load in the first five minutes ?

ProxyPlus runs happily in 32Mb without plugins, though I note that its memory need increases when a plugin becomes active, but that doesn't happen until Avast starts properly.

Just what sort of memory requirement is needed during :-

3.  startup
and
4. an update,
and
5. is there something I can do to reduce it ?  e.g. what is the minimum operational settings of Avast to present ProxyPlus with a functional plugin ? - I've already asked ProxyPlus a question about this problem and am awaiting an answer.

Uncle D