Avast! Free Antivirus tray icon infinitely spinning while watching videos.

I have an old version of Avast! installed and have been using the same version for a good amount of months now with not many issues. But as of yesterday whenever I watch a video on youtube the system tray icon will infinitely spin until the video is stopped or stops itself.

I never had such an issue before, I would open a URL in youtube… the program would scan the files for about 10-15 seconds then stop and periodically scan for stuff every so often but now it just constantly scans 5 files that have the same url infinitely. I like to watch playlists on youtube and having that icon spin and spin and spin forever is really annoying.

I also use a Flash Player plugin for my Firefox browser. (as I hate HTML5) and have used it for ages and never had this problem.

I tested a few things and whenever I turn off the Script scanner for Web Shield the spinning doesn’t happen but the program doesn’t scan youtube in general… which is pretty dangerous so I can’t do that.

I’ve tried numerous other things such as adding youtube’s URL to the exclusions list, adding the flash player process to exclusions list and and adding script exclusions… all attempts have failed.

Anyone know what might be wrong?

  • Which version of Avast Free…?
  • OS…? (32/64 Bit…? - which SP/Build…?)
  • Other security related software installed…?

You can disable the spinning of the icon while avast still scans things.

Info :
You can like or dislike HTML5, but fact is that Yahoo is abandoning flash and switching to HTML5.
Flash is not developed anymore and will soon be deprecated.

Program version 2015 (10.3.2225)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. SP1
Just Comodo Firewall.

I never had this problem ever though until now. For the months I’ve been using the current version I have I’ve not once come across this issue. I’ve seen it scan for a while (5 mins or so but then it would stop) but never constantly and never-ending.

It seems to do it on other streaming sites as well. I don’t know why I’ve never come across this until now. Usually Avast! would ignore or scan briefly sites I visit every day (such as Youtube).

I’m not sure whether it might be a script issue or something because when I disable Script Scanning the scanning stops.

And yes Eddy, I know HTML5 is the way it’s going now but HTML5 is incomplete and takes far too many resources as it is now. Which is why I prefer not to use it. Many other people agree.

When I disable my “Force flash player” add-on in Firefox and it runs HTML5 on the youtube videos instead of flash the infinite scanning doesn’t happen. Not sure what happened.

Update to the latest version (2016.11.1.2253): https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=182468

Another thing I’d like to mention is that when I inspect the Statistics log whenever this event occurs. (which is always) All I see is that the Avast! Web Shield is constantly scanning 5 files (always the same number) and it’s the URL of the youtube video I’m currently watching but 5 times. Why is Avast! scanning the same thing 5 times and not stopping at all? :confused:

Is Avast! Web Shield supposed to just keep scanning files that are being streamed to the PC? Cause I’ve never seen it act like this until now. Unless a recent definition changed the way the shield works? (I dunno much about the program so I wouldn’t know, but I thought that definitions just increased the virus database and how many viruses can be found.)

As said, update to the latest version.

So I did end up updating to the latest version of the program. (11.2.2262) and the problem still persists… when using anything regarding the Adobe Flash Player (a lot of places still use it, for flash games and such) Avast! will just infinitely scan… in statistics there are always 5 files being constantly scanned and the URL is usually the site I’m streaming on.

I tend to stream videos on youtube a lot and have done for many years. I’ve used flash consistently and it never had any incompatibilities with Avast! for a long time. But lately it has been a massive issue. (Not sure whether it might be something to do with the latest 2 updates to the flash player… but it did around this time so I don’t know.)

I suspect the webshield is scanning the stream as constantly data is transfered.
If this is the case it is perfectly normal.

It could be… but it doesn’t constantly scan when I use Youtube’s built in HTML5 player, it scans once and every so often periodically but not like this. I guess it could be the way the new flash is coded… (there have been 2 updates to the player when this problem began) and perhaps it constantly streams files or something now… I don’t know… I’m no programming expert…

The fact it doesn’t constantly scan HTML5 player though could be because I don’t have https scanning enabled… and flash player is technically a script… so it could possibly be an incompatibility with flash player and the script scanner in Avast!.. again dunno.

Just to test, disable the webshield and see if the spinning stops (or is less).
Enable it again after testing ofcourse.