avast! Firewall causing stuttering with uTorrent

[RejZoR]

It seems that avast! Firewall has some sort of leak or something that causes awful stuttering (microsecond lockups) when i'm downloading through uTorrent for longer time on my netbook. I'm blaming avast! Firewall because i tried avast! Free under same conditions and no such problem. Netbook is fully responsive even though uTorrent has been downloading through entire night. But with avast! IS, i've had this issue few times and have thought it's something else that's causing it. Any idea how to pinpoint this issue or you can do it on your own?

avast! Internet Security 5.0.677 (File, Web, Network, Behavior, Script, Virtualization and Firewall components)
uTorrent 2.0.4 (but same problem has happened even before v2.x)
Windows XP SP3 fully updated (except .NET Framework 4 components)
ACER Aspire One (Atom N270, 1,5GBRAM, Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB)

[Gargamel360]

Are you trying to use the P2P shield with uTorrent?  

edit: nvm, its not listed in components you posted.

[RejZoR]

Yeah, i'm aware of that problem, besides, uTorrent is unchecked by default even if you use P2P Shield.

[lukor]

Hi RejZoR, what if you would turn off the firewall when these lockups are happening. Would they instantly disappear? Or is the firewall being installed enough to reproduce the problem (no matter if turned on or off) ?

Thanks a lot.
Lukas.

uTorrent is creating new connections like mad, so any ineffectiveness in the FW is likely to come up during applications like this. We have to definitely test this more. Thanks.

[RejZoR]

I've tried using the STOP button under the firewall provider, but the stuttering remained. It even remained when i closed uTorrent. I guess all the connections were still hitting the firewall.

Oh, i'm also using Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato firmware and enabled router firewall. Though i don't think it should affect this in any way.

[RejZoR]

lukor, any idea?

[privard]

I had the same problem, which started immediately after I replaced Norton IS with Avast IS. Besides the stuttering, I noticed that the percent of CPU cycles uTorrent was using had gone way up, from the usual 0%-2% range to consistently 25%-35% and higher.

First I shut down the P2P Realtime Shield.  Didn't solve the problem.

So following lukor's advice to shut down the Avast firewall, I exited uTorrent and waited for it to truly stop running (looking at Task Manager to see when uTorrent.ext dropped off the list of running apps).  I turned on Windows Firewall, then turned off Avast's firewall, then started uTorrent again: absolutely no problems now.  No stuttering at all, and uTorrent CPU cycles back down to the normal 0%-2% range.  Killing Avast firewall solved the problem (and maybe having killed the p2p Shield beforehand also helped).  

Thanks, lukor!!!

Funny thing is, looking on the web before I found this answer, I saw reports of problems with Avast and torrent programs going back to at least 2005, and specifically with uTorrent and the firewall to 2008, and explanations that it's not uTorrent specifically but just that some components of Avast are too slow to keep up with frequently changing connections and event logging, which are common to all bittorrent programs (and that explanation comes from Avast customer service).  The problem's been known for years and Avast hasn't bothered to fix it.  

[RejZoR]

Actually that problem from before 2010 were related to P2P Shield and uTorrent directly, where uTorrent developers would have to change the way how their program works.

I'm still waiting here for lukor to give us some insight if they have a fix for this issue or not.

[lukor]

Funny thing is, looking on the web before I found this answer, I saw reports of problems with Avast and torrent programs going back to at least 2005, and specifically with uTorrent and the firewall to 2008, and explanations that it's not uTorrent specifically but just that some components of Avast are too slow to keep up with frequently changing connections and event logging, which are common to all bittorrent programs (and that explanation comes from Avast customer service).  The problem's been known for years and Avast hasn't bothered to fix it.  

Hi, still bothering to fix this, hardly this would be known since 2005, especially since the avast firewall was released in January 2010!

[Mr.Agent]

But rejzor did you try to make a exception for uTorrent ?

[firzen771]

Funny thing is, looking on the web before I found this answer, I saw reports of problems with Avast and torrent programs going back to at least 2005, and specifically with uTorrent and the firewall to 2008, and explanations that it's not uTorrent specifically but just that some components of Avast are too slow to keep up with frequently changing connections and event logging, which are common to all bittorrent programs (and that explanation comes from Avast customer service).  The problem's been known for years and Avast hasn't bothered to fix it.  

Hi, still bothering to fix this, hardly this would be known since 2005, especially since the avast firewall was released in January 2010!

LMAO, some people just have absolutely no clue what they are reading or typing it seems, that guy must be on some sort of time warp lol

[RZPogi]

Oh, i'm also using Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato firmware and enabled router firewall. Though i don't think it should affect this in any way.

utorrent currently has problems with linksys wrt54gl routers.

The following routers are known to cause problems with uTorrent: Linksys WRT54G, Linksys WRT54GL , Linksys WRT54GGS and D-Link DI-514 . If you have any of this routers, you may want to read this page. As of August 2010, the linked page does not show any of the incompatible hardware (it did in the past) and has been removed for some reason.

http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/BitTorrentGuide/

[RejZoR]

Not really as i haven't seen such problems on my main system which is also linked to the same router.
Besides most of the problems with routers and P2P programs are related to massive numbers of connections and logging of packets. There are so many of them that they flood routers memory stalling it to a crawl.
But i'm using Tomato firmware and i have logging disabled so i can abuse it even with eMule and it doesn't complain.
eMule is known to be the heaviest internet program you can imagine.

So i don't think this is an issue really.

[Mr.Agent]

I feel bad for you man rejzor uTorrent is a good torrent program if its an avast! problem i hope its fixed soon .

[ArminPasalic!]

Try to exclude Utorrent from Avast! Firewall.