Decided to sort some photos this morning and opened Irfanview Thumbnails. Each thumbnail image took a couple of seconds to appear - it took ages for the whole folder to show. The Avast icon rotated each time.
I tried re-booting - no improvement. I tried turning off shields (briefly!) and images loaded instantly. I tried opening the images in Microsoft Photo Editor and this was equally slow; also ‘fixed’ by turning off Avast.
The images are JPGs around 700 -900KB. Avast is 6.0.1367 update 120201-1. OS is Windows 2000 Pro SP4. I last used Irfanview yesterday (Avast update 120201-0?) and it was working normally.
What you don’t give us is your file system shield settings and if it is the default settings or have you tweaked the settings ?
I have irfanview but I don’t use the thumbnail view feature, I prefer to have my image folders display as thumbnails. That way irfanview doesn’t have to create a thumbnail from each image, that would effectively force avast to scan the newly created thumbnail. Where my image folders using the View, Thumbnails opens almost instantly as the thumbnail view is stored in the thumbs.db file in the folder no need to create a thumbnail every time you open the folder.
Edit: That said I have just tested irfanview thumbnails and I have almost instant opening of the folder and display of the thumbnails. It is certainly as fast as my normal opening of image folders and crucially avast is only reporting having scanned 1 file (not hundreds as I would have though with irfanview creating a thumbnail for each image).
Subsequent opening of folders within irfanview thumbnails doesn’t record any additional activity from the file system shield (FSS). This is with the FSS on pretty much default settings, but Heuristics set to High, so I really don’t know what is going on with your system.
I’m sorry to appear dense(!), but I don’t really understand what you are describing in the Irfanview settings. Most of my settings there are also default.
As I said, Photo Editor is also very slow, so the problem isn’t confined to Irfanview, and it seems that Avast is just taking a very long time to scan JPGs.
The only other security program is ‘Outpost Firewall 2009 ver. 6.5.1’.
I’m going to have a look at a Windows XP machine which hasn’t been switched on for a couple of months. I’ll check it before and after updating Avast and see if I get the same problem.
Update: Tried the XP machine. Result - too close to call. I had the impression there might have been a very slight difference after update. I probably imagined it. Something that may be significant, though: when I select a folder in Irfanview Thumbnails on the XP machine the Avast icon on the Task-bar does not move (it only turns as you open the program). On this machine (my Win2k machine) the icon turns in steps as each image opens.
Update 2: Curiouser and Curiouser! The same occurs when selecting menus in both Irfanview and Photo Editor. On this machine there is a delay and Avast icon activity; on the XP machine, no delay, no icon activity.
This might be related. Some users are reporting that scanning multimedia (mp3, jpg…) files is taking longer than before (than a couple of days ago). So maybe the engine has been changed in some recent update, which would mean that it may change again soon and the slow speed would be gone.
This is just a thought, so Avast Team would need to confirm if this is the case (or directly correct it in some engine update).
I’ve got the exact same problem on a Win XP system, engine ver. 120202-1, program ver. 6.0.1367. I’ve narrowed it down to the File system shield. Turning that off solves the problem. Changing the sensitivy makes no difference, high or low. Test whole files is turned off as well as Scan all files.
You can also set an an exclusion for *.jpg which is what I’ve done.
Surprised to hear SlowImages has the same problem on XP, because I thought I had just proved to myself the problem was that the newest Avast update didn’t work on Win 2k!
I booted up my previous Win 2k system, which was on definitions 111230-0. I ran Irfanview Thumbnails and it worked perfectly. I updated Avast (to 120202-1) and did nothing else, and when I opened Irfanview Thumbnails again the images loaded incredibly slowly - even slower on that machine because it’s only 866MHz! Also there was the Avast icon activity
As I said, my XP machine seems OK, but it is a relief that others have a problem too, because it should hopefully mean it may be fixed before too long.
Just to report that with definitions update 120202-2 the problem is resolved, and image folders are opening normally. It obviously was the same fault as was causing the slow system scan fault in the thread mentioned by ady4um.