Avast killed my Firefox?

[Cully77]

Ok, so I recently uninstalled Norton and immediately there after installed Avast.  Loved Avast on other computers but wasn't running it till now on this one because I was at College where they required Norton.  After installation and 1st boot scan, I noticed that Firefox has slowed to a crawl.  It gets to the point where I type a password, and it takes 30 sec. to appear, or I switch tabs, and it goes unresponsive for some time and then comes back and switches tabs.  This is very frustrating because everything else on my computer seems to be running fine.  I am posting this from IE.  I even opened several applications at one time to try to tax it, and the comp. handled it fine.  I don't understand how this problem could be only confined to Firefox.

Anywho, I installed Firefox 3 in an attempt to fix, that didn't work.  I also ran another scan, Adaware, Spybot, to no avail, and I'm about to try Windows Defender without much hope.  Help is appreciated if you can, I much prefer to use Firefox over IE.

HP a562N (4yrs old)
XP
512 megs ram
200 gig hd
3 gHz Pent. 4 HT

Thanks!

[Lisandro]

Please try:
1) Remove NAV (or other Symantec products) through Add/Remove programs from Control Panel. Boot.
2) Use Norton Removal Tool for Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Boot.
3) Install avast! (or repair the installation) and boot.

[Cully77]

Thanks i ran the removal tool, restarted the computer, uninstalled firefox and reinstalled, then restarted computer and it's all better!

[Lisandro]

Thanks i ran the removal tool, restarted the computer, uninstalled firefox and reinstalled, then restarted computer and it's all better!

Wow... that's good. Welcome to avast forums

[DavidR]

Thanks i ran the removal tool, restarted the computer, uninstalled firefox and reinstalled, then restarted computer and it's all better!

Norton can be a real pig to remove, that tool is a an absolute must, why they can't incorporate what it does into the normal uninstall is beyond me.

Well perhaps not, being of a suspicious nature, if you have problems with other security applications after uninstalling Norton, who would you think was at fault. I would guess many simply go back to the devil they know and miraculously the problem is gone. So I think there is little incentive for them to get their uninstall right.

Welcome to the forums and the avast family.

[jepolch]

Hi folks. New to the forum. I removed McAfee after using it for many years and installed Avast. So far, I love the fact that it uses less resources and seems to do the job as well as McAfee. However, I'm having a similar problem as OP. I'm using Firefox 3.0.10 (latest) and open several tabs on program startup. The tabs show an animated circle of dots icon while the page is loading - Firefox users will understand this. Since I installed Avast home edition I've noticed that some of the tabs continue to show the animated icon long after they appear to have loaded. Some tabs don't auto-refresh. I closed Firefox, then stopped Avast On-Access Protection and then re-started Firefox. All the tabs opened immediately. I am hopeful there's a way I can get Avast to allow web pages to be displayed in Firefox without these delays or hangs. Can someone suggest something. Examples of web pages that have problems are: nytimes.com washingtonpost.com and cnn.com  For what it's worth, I use Firefox add-ons such as Adblock Plus, Flashblock, CookieCuller and a few others. Thanks.

[Lisandro]

jepolch, I had this problem some time ago, I could never find the reason.
Did you update your Firefox recently (new version)?
If you just disable Webshield, will the pages load?
Are you still using McAfee firewall?

[DavidR]

The latest firefox version is now 3.0.11, so update first and see if that makes any difference. No point trying to chase this until you are on the latest version.