Avast 5 WebShield slowing down your web surfing?

[hake]

It makes web browsers on an older slow machine (700MHz Celeron 3) almost unusable unless the Web Shield is unchecked.  By comparison, Avast 4.8.1368 Web Shield is like a Formula 1 racing car.

Page loads on both IE6 SP1 and Opera 10.51 (Windows 2000 SP4) are slowed drastically.  Paradoxically, the page that loads slowest is www.avast.com

Whatever value from a smaller footprint is to be had from Avast 5 is more than cancelled out by the slow Web Shield performance.

I have found that altering sensitivity settings improves matters: changing heuristics to Low and turning off code emulation.  The difference is that a page will now always load eventually whereas with the default settings the process seems to hang indefinitely.  An odd thing with the default settings is the inconsistency of this behaviour.  Occasionally a page will load less slowly (even www.avast.com ).  I suppose it's better than turning Web Shield off altogether.

To be fair to Avast, I am very pleased with Avast 5 on more puissant hardware.  No performance issues are evident on my Athlon 3000XP machine and the software works well and unobtrusively.

[EntitY]

Not to rock-the-boat, but is there any Fix for this Web-Shield problem in sight yet? Maybe an update coming in the near future? We are on page 11...

[Hermite15]

We are on page 11...

yep, I noticed the size of this thread was increasing every day

[mkis]

Hi hake,

As of time of writing, I believe that Windows 2000 is not supported by avast 5.
(I may be corrected on this, but no surprise if Win 2000 is not in the mix)

[DavidR]

Win2k is supported but it needs the rollup 1 update or something like that over and above SP4.

Please make sure you have the Update Rollup 1 installed (it's required for avast! 5):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B54730CF-8850-4531-B52B-BF28B324C662&displaylang=en

[mkis]

I've never heard of it David. I have got a Win 2000 I can run, but I can't see the purpose really. Not for myself anyway. Well, no I would not run it.

[greenhatch]

I'd noticed how big this thread was getting without particularly thinking I had a web page loading problem, as I welcome as much filtering as necessary to protect me from ads and malware (WebShield and the brilliant Admuncher program). However I have just copied the sensitivity adjustments mentioned above by a fellow user, of reducing heuristics to low and unchecking code emulation and I got a very noticeable page loading improvement. So thanks to all the contributors to this thread

(Vista Home Premium SP2)

[Firetooth]

Hi, my first post.
I was an avg user for years but just switched 2 computers to Avast last week due to possible conflict with my zonealarm firewall.

I like Avast very much so far, though of course I am still getting familiar with it. I have all features running.

I have 2 computers with Windows XP pro SP3--a laptop with a pentium 3, average speed machine, and a desktop with a pentium 4, fast machine. Both have the zonealarrm firewall. I am very happy with both of them.

My web surfing slowed down considerably when I switched from avg to Avast. Guessing, I would say that the time to load a given page took about 10 times longer, even more sometimes. But it is probably a bit more complicated than that:
AVG has an active surfshield option. When that was on the time was about equal to that of Avast with http scan traffic enabled. Avg also has a system for identifying safe sites, called surf checker or something like that. I already forgot the name! It put a green checkmark next to a safe site. So I just used that.

While reading this thread I saw that turning off "scan web http traffic" might help, so I tried it. It helps a lot, and returns me to expectable surfing and page-loading speeds.

It does raise a question for me: what is the effect on security having this function turned off?

I am happy to start a new thread with this question also.

Anyway, I really like Avast. Already some of my friends are switching over on my advice. One of my favorite things is the spinning ball in the taskbar that lets me know Avast is up to something! Also the boot scan is great.

Firetooth
 

[hake]

I agree with Firetooth.

I have the temerity to suggest that Avast software consider if it is practical to offer the web shield from v4.8 as an installation alternative to the v5 web shield or else offer a cut down v5 Web Shield as an option.  Better to have a lesser web shield than none.  The v4.8 web shield did slow the browsing down on an old slow computer but it was still tolerable and usable.

I don't think that the OS is the issue.  It's just that v5 Web Shield takes too many processor cycles to do its work.  Windows XP and Windows 2000 are architecturally similar.  My Windows 2000 is SP4 with the rollup plus all patches to date.

Actually, I am only running Windows 2000 because a friend has a modest laptop which will run Windows 2000 but not Windows XP because it only supports 256MB memory.  I keep an old machine so I can try things out for her before installing on her laptop.

[mkis]

@ hake
architecturally win2000 and XP are different - to what extent I couldn't really say, other than that 2000 was just too hard-lined network (history OS2 -> NT 4.0 -> win2000 - you cannot upgrade win 9x to win2000).

win2000 has regedt32, whereas XP has regedt32 and regedit (btw regedt32 is meant to be faster editor)

what it boiled down to was too many hardware/devices/drivers would not take to win2000 - you needed a hardware compatibility list at hand (HCL), but if you wanted to work within the list and fill out yr network with the recommended options, then win2000 proved an exceptional OS (at this point, my tech tutor would normally roll his eyes as if to say 'cr#p' - and true, because XP eclipsed win2000)

but bottomline - use win2000, you are in enthusiast bracket, takes bit more work and a few things can't do. And also - run XP + 256ram is now only just enough to power minimum software + avast, any version, though can be done with good running system.

[SafeSurf]

I downloaded Avast v. 5.0.462 to three PC's with different set ups -- two with XP similar with my signature below and one with Vista.  All had Avast 4.0+ on them prior without problems, and like everyone else a turtle can crawl quicker than all 3 of my PC's now.

I have trouble-shooted and disabled one at a time my firewall, NoScript, turned off anything that wasn't on-demand and figured out it was Avast.  I also turned off the Web Shield of Avast without being able to crawl any quicker.

The average time to load a page within this forum during off peak time in the US and EU takes 2 minutes and 40 seconds using high speed broadband.  My other PC on dial up goes quicker than this! 

I love Avast and it's features.  But please Avast...do something because we can't get anything done not being able to load pages on our PC's!!!  Thank you.

[YoKenny]

@ SafeSurf

You do not indicate in your signature the CPU type and speed and how much RAM the system has.

This information helps offer pertinent advice.

[SafeSurf]

Forgive the late response, but I've been trying all this time to load the page.  Each PC has plenty of RAM (I'm a clean-freak when it comes to my PC's being tidy  , and one is a new Vista that I'm holding off a bit longer to upgrade to Win7.  I can't check the CPU right now because I'm afraid I'll get kicked off the page then I'll have to wait forever to reload...but I know I'm fast at everything else and multitask with all the PC's.

I don't think it's just my PC.  If you look at this forum, others have the same problem.  Some have older PC's and others newer.  I appreciate you offering to help though.  Time for me to get some sleep.

[mkis]

Hi SafeSurf

What you see on the forum are people who have problems running avast on their computers, and what you don't see are all the people who don't have problems. Mostly people don't have problems. I think fair to say this - on basis of how many users have been signed up as compared to how many have come to the forum with problems. Immediately evident is fact that those with problems are the exception and not the rule.

Nonetheless, exceptions or not, the problem computers are a problem for avast.
These issues do need to be sorted out.

[SafeSurf]

I am aware of that since I've been on the forums long enough.  The only way I could actually get on now was to disable Avast.  I did more trouble shooting.  When I look to see what program and what IP address and country is tying up my PC, it is Avast and/or it's components.   The fact that the only way I could get online to get to this forum was to disable Avast (which I hate to do because I don't like not having protection), tells me something. 

I have tried playing around with the setting of the Web Shield and Scan http traffic and have disabled various parts of them and attempted to surf without being where I was using v. 4.0+, and in the default setting I cannot even load a page.  As I said earlier, I have done clean installs of both Avast and firewall and have tried disabling various programs.

I am open to suggestions since this is affecting all 3 of my PC's with the newer version of Avast.  Thank you.