system slowdown

[winnie]

running home edition on win 98 and everything has become painfully slow.  Recent reformat and installation of Avast at the same time was when problems started.  Disabled Avast in startup and everything went back to normal, any suggestions as I love the program and don't want to uninstall it.

[Lisandro]

running home edition on win 98 and everything has become painfully slow.  Recent reformat and installation of Avast at the same time was when problems started.  Disabled Avast in startup and everything went back to normal, any suggestions as I love the program and don't want to uninstall it.

We need to know more about your installation and system.
What are your configurations for avast, specially the Standard Shield provider ones?
Do you have enough free disk space? How much RAM memory do you have?
Did you set the sensitibility to High?

[winnie]

Standard Shield on High, did not customize, p2p Normal,Mail-normal, IM-normal, Resident protection standard  Have 20 Gig Hard drive and only used 1.01gb 128 Mbs Ram Not sure about the last question.  Hope this helps-

[Lisandro]

My last question was about the level of scanning of the resident protection:

You can clicking the Resident Scanner button to set the sensitivity of avast! resident protection. There are three basic levels of the protection:

Disabled. The resident scanner is stopped. Not recommended.

Standard. Common, default setting. All executables are scanned when you run them and all documents and scripts when you open them. Only unread messages are tested in MS Outlook.

High. It is so-called paranoid mode - it works as the Standard mode but even files being copied are scanned. Additionally, all messages are tested on opening in MS Outlook.

If you set High, maybe you will get the most protection but with a lack of resources. See, you do not have to much RAM. Although avast is not a RAM eater, you can experiment some slowdown if you set it to High. Believe me, other antivirus will make it worse. I used McAfee, Norton and AVG...  

[bob3160]

I can defenitly advise you not to use Norton. It not only slows you down, it makes your system take knapps.

[shgoh]

winnie..consider some ram tools from technical's post

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=1509;start=30

might help

[winnie]

Would never use Norton as I've heard about all the problems with it.  Which particular Ram tool is best?  I could put up with things being a bit slow but this is extremely slow to the point of not knowing if anything is happening.  I know it's Avast because I closed it right down and the problem ceased.  What settings should I use especially for mail and browsing security?  Should I uninstal and try it again?  I will stick with it because I believe it is an excellent program.
Thanks for the help so far.

[stevejrc]

I use FreeRAM XP Pro (works on 98 too) and PageDefrag but thats Win2k/XP only. FreeRAM XP works well set on auto-free @ 20mb, reducing avasts usage by half, much sooner than windows does it.

I also have p2p and internet mail terminated as I dont use kazza etc or outlook express, which I assume also saves memory.

[Lisandro]

I use FreeRAM XP Pro (works on 98 too) and PageDefrag but thats Win2k/XP only. FreeRAM XP works well set on auto-free @ 20mb, reducing avasts usage by half, much sooner than windows does it.

I also have p2p and internet mail terminated as I dont use kazza etc or outlook express, which I assume also saves memory.

I use the same as steve... FreeRAM XP Pro, PageDefrag and disable unused providers...  

[CharleyO]

Winnie - you might also concider using MSconfig to see what programs are on the Startup list. It may be that there are a few you do not need to be running all the time from startup.      

As Technical mentioned above, you do not have very much RAM to begin with.      

[winnie]

I have run msconfig and there are no unnecessary programs running.  I will look into getting some extra RAM installed but in the meantime what is the best configuration for my needs as mentioned in a previous post.
Thanks

[shgoh]

winnie..maybe you should just keep the resident level as normal for the time being...just my thought

[Lisandro]

If you want the 'High' level, choose 'Custom' level and check only the 'default' extension settings to scan (open/change/modify files).

[winnie]

Just to update all those that offered advice.  Installed FreeRam XP Pro and noticed that it was only working with 64 meg ram, took it back to my tech and apparently one stick of ram was cactus , replaced and all is back to normal.  I am surprised that anything managed to run on only 64meg but it did, painfully slowly  and so did Avast (just)  I was determined to track it down because I didn't want to unistall it.  It's an excellent Virus prog. that we'll be sticking with.  Many of my friends have converted to it as well as the shop techie is now recommending it to all his customers.  Thanks to you all
Winnie

[Bernie]

Another reason for system slow down can be a heavy CPU load. You can open the "Task Manager" and see which processes cause which CPU load. Maybe there is something extraordinary running all the time...