AIS and uTorrent Problem?

[firzen771]

ive noticed this happe everytime i run utorrent that my system becomes very sluggish, menus are slow to load, firefox becomes laggy, windows is slow to navigate around, etc. the sluggishness continues even when i close utorrent, the only way to get the sluggishness to go away seems to be to restart my computer and as long as i dont run utorrent again, my system will stay speedy throughout the whole day, only once i run utorrent does the sluggishness happen

Anyone experiencing problem with AIS and utorrent since i dont remember this sluggishness happening before i upgraded to v6 and also while i was using Comodo firewall i never had this problem either  

[JANEWAY]

I have the same problem, But I also have it when Im not running uTorrent. Like sometimes when I go to my add/remove programs the OS seems to lag a bit while it searches. I am running Windows 7 x64 with 4G RAM

[reesd]

I let utorrent run for a few hours during lunch. When I came back I found my drive really running hard.

I brought up procman (Process Monitor) to find that AvastSvc.exe was constantly reading an ISO I was seeding. And I do mean constantly. The procman file summary shows AvastSvc.exe has 4.2GB Bytes Read in the ten minutes I ran procmon on that one ISO file alone. The ISO file is 2G, but its still double the size of a file in ten minutes.

It seems to be the P2P Shield. Stopping it eventually stops all the AvastSvc.exe reading. Though there is a very noticeable lag after stopping the P2P Shield before the reading actually stops. So it seems to finish the files its reading rather then immediately stopping. Which made it hard to track this down.

Some other things to note here:

P2P Shield =has its own settings and seems to ignore the exclusions in the File System Shield.

It never reported the file in the P2PShield.txt file even though I have all item types checked (including OK).

Even though the very limited help says ""checks files downloaded", its clearly scanning the heck out of uploaded (seeded) files also.

In my case this file has been around for days, so I would have hoped it ended up in a transient cache, but it seems the P2P Shield doesn't use an type of transient cache (even if it read it ten minutes ago).

It doesn't support exclusions (other than removing packers).

I really don't know exactly what the P2P Shield does. The help is really sparse on what the P2P shield does. Basically just "checks files downloaded using common peer-to-peer (file sharing) programs". Lot's of folks have asked, but doesn't seem to have been answered even though its been asked at least a dozen times on the forum. Each time it seems the thread stops or digresses to if a particular application is covered rather than what the P2P Shield actually it does.



So for now I personally am turning it off and depending on the File System Shield, which seems pretty safe to me and gives me exclusions and the cache. Any executable/script file I actually try to use will be caught by it anyway. I guess the one danger is I could bring down a malware torrent file and share it with someone else, but due to the joy of torrents they will get the exact same file no matter who they torrent it from so I am not really increasing their risk.


d

[ArtemisF0wl]

i believe this is an old, well known issue... it has something to do with the way utorrent handles files, and its why utorent is disabled by default in P2p shield

[reesd]

I'm pretty sure utorrent was selected by default when I first installed 6. I don't remember explicitly enabling it (but I could be wrong - a mouse click can be easy to forget).

I did search the forums before posting and didn't find this specific issue. Well I did find old stuff, but I discounted it because it was so old.

Still, here is a thread from 2007 that seems similar - http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=30011., though its for downloading.

So I guess its not fixed and it applies to seeing also. Bummer.

d

[DavidR]

No, uTorrent has been unchecked by default for some considerable time because of the way it works, creating lots of small files forces avast to scan all these small parts and could impact on performance.

[YoKenny]

No, uTorrent has been unchecked by default for some considerable time because of the way it works, creating lots of small files forces avast to scan all these small parts and could impact on performance.

That's true.

It is not selected in File Shield but has to be selected in P2P SHIELD SETTINGS.

Read Vlk's post:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=30011.msg247365#msg247365

[reesd]

No, uTorrent has been unchecked by default for some considerable time because of the way it works, creating lots of small files forces avast to scan all these small parts and could impact on performance.

Ok, my bad - I must have forgotten checking it. And I'm not going to argue with another David R. . I will just leave it off for now and lean on File System as I planned.

For future reference though, I wasn't seeing CPU spikes, but lots of disk access and stalling in utorrent. Also, this wasn't a case of a bunch of small files as you suggest and it wasn't a file being downloaded as http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=30011.msg247365#msg247365 describes. It was one 2G file that was being seeded, utorrent was creating no new files. It was just reading and sharing that one file. It seems like that caused the P2P Shield to constantly read it.

Oh, and an important thing I forgot to mention before this, I am using the 3.0 alpha, so that may explain the differences in utorrent's behavior.


d

[reesd]

I really don't know exactly what the P2P Shield does. The help is really sparse on what the P2P shield does. Basically just "checks files downloaded using common peer-to-peer (file sharing) programs". Lot's of folks have asked, but doesn't seem to have been answered even though its been asked at least a dozen times on the forum. Each time it seems the thread stops or digresses to if a particular application is covered rather than what the P2P Shield actually it does.

I still also would like to know what P2P does. If its documented somewhere or in the forums, I haven't found it. How is it different than File System Shield? Does it do downloads or uploads as well? Etc?

Thanks,
d

[Lisandro]

About P2P: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer.

[Nesivos]

I use the default settings on uTorrent.  I am now using uTorrent 3.0 Beta

I have downloaded one movie with 3.0 Beta; i.e.12 Angry Men.  A 1957 movie.  It is about 700MB and took between 10-15 minutes to download.  3.0 Beta seems faster than 2.2.  Of course that was only one movie.

I have a suggestion on how to improve Firefox performance without manually tweaking Avast, Windows or Firefox but won't mention the name of the software that does this because the software that does this in from a company that is persona non grata here.

[DavidR]

I really don't know exactly what the P2P Shield does. The help is really sparse on what the P2P shield does. Basically just "checks files downloaded using common peer-to-peer (file sharing) programs". Lot's of folks have asked, but doesn't seem to have been answered even though its been asked at least a dozen times on the forum. Each time it seems the thread stops or digresses to if a particular application is covered rather than what the P2P Shield actually it does.

I still also would like to know what P2P does. If its documented somewhere or in the forums, I haven't found it. How is it different than File System Shield? Does it do downloads or uploads as well? Etc?

Thanks,

Essentially it does the equivalent of the web shield (scans http traffic) but for p2p traffic streams. The idea being to prevent it getting on to your system.

[gilmour]

There is also an acknowledged problem with AIS firewall and uTorrent that maybe causing your issue.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=71639.msg600696#msg600696

Vlk posts back at end of Feb 2011 that there trying to fix the problem but as of now still nothing has changed.
I have this exact same issue and to stop the system from grinding to a halt when using utorrent at times you have
to uninstall the AIS firewall module.
In my case I did a fair bit of testing and I only have the system slowdown issues when running uTorrent when
the AIS firewall module is installed. When AIS firewall module is uninstalled I have absolutely no problems with
uTorrent and system slowdowns. Just means I have to use the Win7 firewall.

You can try a quick test next time you get the system slowdown with uTorrent, try stopping the AIS firewall and
see if it fixes the problem. It's only a temp fix and doesn't always work well.

I hope they can fix this problem soon as I payed for software that I can't fully use whilst other firewall/virus
solutions don't have this problem.

[Nesivos]

Did you try this

How to Troubleshoot Slow Utorrent Download Speeds
Increase your torrent download speed with a few simple steps.

µTorrent is a torrent program that allows users to download large files directly from other users. The plus side to torrenting is the download cannot be interrupted and lost, and it is easy to pause, stop or restart the download at any time. One downside of torrenting with programs such as µTorrent is the sometimes slow download speed. The users currently uploading the files choose the speed at which others can download the file. However, there are a few tricks and optimizations that increase the potential download speed of any torren

1. Open the µTorrent program. Click the "Options" button near the top of the screen and select "Setup Guide."
2. Click the "Run Tests" button. After the tests complete, µTorrent automatically configures some of your settings to the optimum levels for your computer and Internet connection.
3. Click on the "Options" button and select "Preferences." Click on the "BitTorrent" button and make sure the "Outgoing" option in the "Protocol Encryption" section is enabled. Click the check box next to "Allow incoming legacy connections."
4. Exit µTorrent completely. This is necessary for some of the changes to take effect.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6821041_troubleshoot-slow-utorrent-download-speeds.html

Or you can here http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=15992 for other suggestions.  Even though the post is from 2006 it could still be helpful

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

Would be nice if we could get an official word on how to set up utorrent in the FW. Never had a problem.

Why do you need an official word if you do not encounter any problems?