Avast 5 free takes 5 minutes to start on Windows XP

[picoavast]

 
I used avast 4.x free very successfully in the past years. I upgraded to avast 5 free, and the result is that when system starts (Win Xp) I cannot use it for about 5 minutes, whilst avast is doing something .... When avast has finished his job (AvastSvc.exe) everything is working, but not before 5 minutes ....
This is not acceptable, I will remove version 5 and I hope that version 4.8 is still working fine.
Any suggestion?
Thanks
Max

[Pondus]

Use the uninstall utility and remove avast 5  and reboot  http://www.avast.com/en-eu/uninstall-utility
then run it again and renmove avast 4.8  and reboot
then install avast 5 again


did it help....?

[davebaldwin]

I had a problem with Avast 5.0.462 taking up to 22 minutes to allow my Windows XP computer to boot up.  I uninstalled it and did a fresh install and then it took only 4 minutes to boot up at that time.  Now it is back to taking 12 to 18 minutes to boot up.  I have the current version 5.0.545 and I have kept it updated.  If you know why this happens, I'd like to know and know how to fix it.

[DavidR]

Do a couple of reboots, whit a new installation of avast5 during the boot it creates/populates the persistent cache.

The purpose of this persistent cache is to speed future scanning, but the overhead is a slightly longer boot/initial scans. However, what you are experiencing is certainly not the norm, yes I can imagine it might take a minute or so longer (depending on your system spec CPU, RAM, etc. ?) but nothing like this.

Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

What other security based software do you have installed ?

[davebaldwin]

I use Spybot (no TeaTimer) and Spywareblaster.  This morning, it took forever for the mail and web shields to become active.  I checked the box to have Avast start last but it's not doing it, it still comes up first.  I'm wondering if it's trying to hook the network connections before they're available.

[YoKenny]

@ davebaldwin

How much RAM does the system have?
What it the CPU speed and type?

[DavidR]

I use Spybot (no TeaTimer) and Spywareblaster.  This morning, it took forever for the mail and web shields to become active.  I checked the box to have Avast start last but it's not doing it, it still comes up first.  I'm wondering if it's trying to hook the network connections before they're available.

Well the web shield and mail shield are manual startups, under a user account as opposed to being auto start under the avast service. This may mean that they wait for other services/programs to start, etc. so as YoKenny mentions CPU and RAM could have an effect, but I really don't believe it should be that great.

Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

Did you do the clean reinstall as Pondus suggested ?

e.g. Uninstall avast, reboot into safe mode, run the avast uninstall utility for both 4.8 and 5.0, reboot and install avast 5.0.

[davebaldwin]

I did a clean install a when I first posted about slow startup in February.  This is an old machine with a 667MHz pIII with 1280MB of ram.  In February after the clean install, it booted up in 4 minutes.  This morning it took about 15 minutes before I could use the machine and 45 minutes, yes 45 minutes, before the mail and web shields finally worked.  During that time, Avast was using 97% of the CPU time and caused several errors.  The only unusual thing about this machine is that I have a dual network card in it.  I'm wondering if that is confusing Avast.

[davebaldwin]

I uninstalled and then rebooted twice to make sure and then reinstalled Avast 5.  The bootup time once again went from 20 minutes plus to 4 minutes.  Interesting that Avast is now loading last like I asked it to.  It is updated to version 5.0.545 now.  We'll see how long this lasts.