100% CPU Usage during auto-update

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Sent to the support email on 04/05/2008,
Still got no answer.

Dear Sir / Madam,
We currently have 25 licenses of avast anti-virus in our company,
we have chosen avast because it can be silent (after properly configured), and completely unnoticeable (utilizing small amount of resources).

however, in the last year, we had some glitches in few of our workstations, for example, in one of them, which is showing a video file in a loop,
we encounter a hiccup (the video is paused for a second) every few days or so. we have spend quite an amout of time to investigated this phenomenon,
and only in the last few days we realized that the source of it was the avast auto-update, during which, for a few seconds, there was not enough cpu power left to handle the video decoding.

surely, any anti-virus should not stand in the way of smooth video playback, or any other realtime activity for that matter,
the way I see it, there are two viable solution:

  1. enforcing a limit on the amount of maximum cpu usage used by avast. (in my opinion, this is the best solution)
  2. adding the option to schedule an auto-update in specific hour of the day, (much like windows update), so that no update will be performed during work-hours, while still enjoying the convenience of automatic updates.

the current situation bothers us dearly, and I’m sure that there are many other firms and Individuals who are suffering from the symptom described above, who have no clue that avast is responsible for it.
Were using AMD Athlon 3200+ with 2GB RAM in the workstation used to display the video file, OS is Windows XP Pro.
I’ll be happy to provide further data.

Thanks,
Tal Aloni

2

In Pro version, just schedule it…

3

The quesion is, how much CPU power is really needed.
The auto-updater is never using more than 30% CPU usage (i.e. there’s already a CPU usage limiting mechanism in place).
But there are other factors, such as disk usage, that can also distract the video playback…

Cheers
Vlk

4

  1. I was unaware of that option up untill now, seems to work great for the Pro. (Scheduler > New)

  2. VLK is right, it may have to do with disk usage, so the safest way is to schedule updates.
    I am using the Home edition in my home as well, (and I recommended it to quite a few friends)
    [to my boss as well, that’s why we purchased 25 licences]

Is there something similar I can do at home? (just schedule updates)
(is there anyway to execute auto-updates using Windows Scheduled Tasks for example?)

5

I think I found out myself:

ashupd.exe program /silent /autoreboot
ashupd.exe vps /silent /autoreboot

is the above commands going to work as I expect?
[Of course I plan to run it under an account with the proper file / network access]

Thanks,
Tal

6

I think not… only the Pro version has ashupd.exe tool available.

7

thanks for the response,

but that sounds incorrect,
I had ashupd.exe at home. (home edition)

everything is already been set-up, it’s seemed to work…