avast 4.8 slowing my vista start up

I recently downloaded avast 4.8 home edition. It installed quite well and performed great.

One thing bothers me though. Ever since I started using avast my vista start up considerably slowed down. My rig has vista home premium, 1.66 core2 duo & 1gig ram btw. My system reports avast takes 39 second to load and it’s the one causing the slow start up of windows.

Now, I’m wondering if there is any way to correct this. Speed up avast’s loading on start up. Any help on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys!

Just wondering (as a non-Vista user but supporting them) how you obtained this detailed information on avast taking 39 seconds to load? Can you provide details please?

By the way 39 seconds in how long for your total system load time?

On vista - right click ‘my computer’, then click ‘properties’, ‘performance’, ‘advance tools’. On that window you’ll see the ‘performance issue’ - if there’s any. Mine reports ‘Startup programs are causing Windows to start slowly’. Clicking it will bring up a small window that shows the program that’s causing the problem. That’s how I found out that avast is taking 39 sec to load. Before avast, my rig only takes less than 10 sec to fully load windows.

Most interesting, that is very much faster than one of my folks on Vista with the latest top end machine from Dell.

Which antivirus product you had before avast loaded within that 10 seconds?

avg free 7.5. Any idea how to make avast load faster? I tried disabling rootkit scan on system startup but that didn’t do anything at all.

I installed Avast 4.8 last night after having AVG 7.5 on my Vista computer. ( I did test AVG 8.0 on my XP Pro computer first). The startup is faster than before. Note, however, that I do only load the default and network servers portions (as I did with AVG). All computers, Vista and XP, load either faster or the same time as with AVG.

The only problem I have seen is when the VRDB is built, I allow it to complete the very first time. Then I use the screen-saver mode.

The rootkit scan is currently set to be performed 8 minutes after system start and lasts a very short time (see the avast logs folder aswAr.log for details of start and end time of the scan).

Don’t do that… the rootkit scan is being performed 8 minutes after load up, it can’t be due to the startup slow. You can disable the scanning of dll (libraries) while loading. See Standard Shield settings.
I suppose you’ve uninstalled AVG 7.5 before installing avast…

sorry for interrupting, but can is it possible to edit the delay time of the rootkit scanner?

Yes: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=1647.msg21553#msg21553

Yes there is as Tech mentions, but I would have to ask why you feel this is necessary, e.g. are you experiencing a problem and if so what ?

The delay has been tweaked over the beta trials and initial program update to the current delay so as to be the least obtrusive.

just wondering. if it has been tweaked, i will leave it then

I personally wouldn’t touch the default setting (8 minutes after boot) for this unless there was a reason, e.g. experiencing a problem.

Ok, I turned rootkit scanning back on, but can you tell me how to disable the scanning of dll while loading? Can’t seem to find an option for that. Is that the ‘Scan dynamic libraries on load (Windows XP+ only)’?

Yes, I uninstalled avg 7.5 before installing avast.

Well, I disabled Scan dynamic libraries on load, but it didn’t changed anything. avast still takes 39 sec to load.

Now I’m getting really desperate.

I would suggest to let Avast scan dll’s, not to override this. After changing that to the default (let Avast scan them), at least for troubleshooting purpose, maybe you could try:

  1. Rightclick the Avast Icon in the Notification Area
  2. Program Settings…
  3. In the left panel, choose Troubleshooting
  4. Check the “Delay loading of avast! services after other system services” option
  5. Click “OK”, close every other program and save your work and reboot.

This option may help you boot faster, but also it has the potential to let some malware get into your system and Avast not chatching it.

If this option helps you, you may try to locate what other services and/or programs are loading theirselfs. Avast is trying to scan those, and that slows the windows boot time. If you can identify the “problematic” proccess, another solution for you could be to delay that proccess, instead of avast. By doing so, the boot time will be fine, and avast will scan that other proccess only when it starts (that is, delayed).

I hope this helps.

thanks guys for all the help/suggestions. now i’m wondering if i’m the only one on vista with this kind of problem. i don’t see a post in this forum with this kind of predicament.

What other resident programs are being load?
What other startup programs are running?

My start up includes:

Resident - Windows Defender, Synaptics Pointing Device Driver, Lenovo Hotkey.

Additional Apps - Comodo firewall Pro, Spam Fighter, Ypops, and lastly, avast.

Again, before avast I never encountered slow start up. I was on avg free 7.5 then.

I tried all the things you guys here said I should try but to no avail.

I bet on Comodo firewall interaction with avast…
If you uninstall Comodo just for a while, will it help?