Avast Free 2014 causing slowdown in Chrome 36

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have been working with the Chrome engineers and we have found an issue with Avast 2014 and Chrome 36+ on Windows 7 (for now). It causes general slowdown of all UI fields, hovers and scrolling.

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msgid/chrome/b86971ca-9d45-411b-a30f-b7ccc06d2c27%40googleproductforums.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=395253

Disabling Avast makes no difference, but uninstalling it does. Completely fixes the issue.

Is there a way to exclude Avast libraries for loading into Chrome until the Google guys have finished their testing?

2

Disable/remove the browser plugin.

3

Removing all of the browser extensions was the first thing we did. If you put chrome://conflicts into the browser, you see that despite there being no actual Extension loaded and Avast being “disabled”, Avast loads a large amount of libraries into Chrome:

avast! Asynchronous Virus Monitor (AAVM) AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aavm4h.dll
avast! AAVM Remote Procedure Call Library AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aavmrpch.dll
Basic Functionality Module AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.518 c:\program files\avast software\avast\ashbase.dll
avast! Shell Extension AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\ashshell.dll (Shell Extension – Not loaded yet)
Task Handling Module AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\ashtask.dll
avast! Auxiliary Library AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswaux.dll
Common functions AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswcmnbs.dll
Antivirus independent functions AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswcmnis.dll
Antivirus HW dependent library AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswcmnos.dll
Communication Channels AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.518 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswcommchannel.dll
Antivirus engine loader AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswengldr.dll
avast! Script Blocking filter library AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswjsflt.dll

AVAST Software a.s.
c:\program files\avast software\avast\aswproperty.dll
aswDld Dynamic Link Library AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\avastip.dll
avast! snxhk AVAST Software a.s. 9.0.2021.515 c:\program files\avast software\avast\snxhk.dll

We are trying to isolate a setting in Avast to stop it doing whatever it is doing to Chrome (even after it is “disabled”) so the Chrome team can figure out why it is slowing down on some Windows 7 computers - are there any settings to stop Avast injecting itself into Chrome? I have tried all of the standard disabling of web scripts in Chrome and also adding Chrome as an exclusion, but they make no difference.

4

BTW - uninstalling Avast and using a different AV product fixes the problem, which is what I did. I am doing this on request to help the Chrome team find why this is happening. If the team can’t isolate what in Avast & Chrome is causing this issue I would say they will just recommend to uninstall Avast and use something else.

5
are there any settings to stop Avast injecting itself into Chrome?
Yes, remove the browser plug-in as I said.

And why trying it with 36 while 38.0.2096.0 is the latest release?

6

Per http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/search/label/Stable%20updates, Chrome 36.0.1985.125 is the latest stable as of July 16.

7

As Gopher John stated, Chrome 36.0.1985.125 is the latest stable whereas Chrome 38.0.2096.0 is the latest dev release.

8

Could you give me some links where exactly is lagging? Are you just talking about the sunspider test?

There is definitely something going on with sunspider and Chrome (very large date-format-tofte.html numbers), but I am not noticing any lag in every day use though.