As of about 2-3 weeks ago I noticed my internet connection started to slow down dramatically. Often IE will just hang on a URL (the status bar will slowly progress and the Windows logo will wave) until I kill Avast and then the page will come up immediately. The internet runs fine when I stop On Access Protection and then slows down (and as I said sometimes hangs indefinitely on some pages) when I enable On Access Protection. Any ideas?
I have Avast Home Edition version 4.6.744.
Windows Media Center 2005
Athlon 2400+, 1GB RAM.
Hi and welcome ,
There was an update a while back that may have inadvertently changed your standard sheild settings from normal to high . just check this by double clicking “A” ball and look at standard sheild setting. Beyond that i cold suggest a little utility called TCP optimiser that i tried out a while back . Made a significant difference to my pc performance http://www.infos-du-net.com/en/telecharger/SG-TCP-Optimizer.html
good luck
TCP optimiser doesn’t directly address my Avast On-Access Protection problem I’m having. As I said as soon as I disable On Access Protection it fixes the slowdown. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Totally no need to “kill” whole resident protection as you mentioned… You just have to “kill” WebShield and it will give you the same effect. I am also experiencing the same for example when I want to take a look at some MSN messenger account profile. Can’t see anything except dark blue background until I “kill” web shield for a moment, and then of course, I enable it again…
Also see what’s your sensitivity in web shield… some tweakings may help. But for sure, you do not want to be without standard shield and some other providers. Standard shield is a standard part of On-Access Protection, so when you stop it, everything goes off. When you are having troubles with some web pages, but only if you are 110% sure that those pages doesn’t contain malicious stuff (I mean, if you trust them 110%), then you should just terminate WebShield provider for a moment. As I said, only if you trust them !
It’s funny you mentioned MSN, because one of the pages that always hangs is when I log-in to Hotmail. Maybe in this case it’s related to Microsoft’s Passport?
Also thanks for the tip. It does un-hang once I stop the WebSheild service only.
There used to be an issue with logging in to Hotmail (and similar pages), where you are redirected to an https page (which avast doesn’t monitor) and then to another page. I can’t recall what the resolution was (perhaps someone else can), I think it may have concerned a firewall/browser and web shield. The resolution may have been to manually setup the browser to use web shield’s proxy.
So a forum search for can’t log in to Hotmail might bring some info.
In my humble opinion sucha hassle for every single one of those new users, not familiar with tweakings of any program, especially not familiar with tweaking of antivirus providers. That should be simplified somehow… something like one-click-and-all-set option.
I am not experiencing any problem logging into Hotmail (either with Firefox or with IE) and not seeing Web Shield causing interruption to any page delivery (I am also using ZoneAlarm) .
While that is no comfort to those experiencing these difficulties it suggests that some other factor is involved. Perhaps a member of the avast! team can offer some thoughts on how the affected users might isolate the problem.
I have to say that I don’t have problems signing into my hotmail account at all. However, problems starts to show up once you try to check on someone else’s Hotmail profile… for example, from within MSN messenger, right click on some of your contact names, and chose VIEW PROFILE.
Logging into my Hotmail e-mail account is not a problem in my case… I can’t say anything in bascheew’s name, we should get some feedback from him as well.
I do not use MSN Messenger, but, in the interests of research I just installed it. I set up a couple of my Hotmail accounts with profiles and added them as contacts in MSN Messenger.
The profiles I set up were very simple (without pictures and just basic information) but when I selected “View Profile” for any of the contacts the profile display opens immediately in Firefox (my default browser) and shows the contact info.
It occirs to me that it may be possible that MSN (and Hotmail for that matter) may have a slightly different sequence of http interactions in different geographical installations so my experience in California may not be identical to yours in Canada or others in Europe or elsewhere.
I am running the latest version of Avast Pro and have this same problem, just after the past updates of the Avast program occured.
I have an Athlon64 3200+ with 1.25gb Ram running on XP Pro x64 and now my system is running like a 386! The whole system is down to a crawl compared to before the updates and my Internet access is hit or miss whether a page will even ever load.
I read this thread and checked my webshield settings and they were in fact on high but even on standard it makes no difference. What is causing this horrendous slowdown?
I hope someone has an answer soon or I will have no choice but to uninstall Avast from my system, which I really do not want to do.
have you identied any tasks in the Windows Task Manager that seem to have very high CPU utilization? Have you tried turning off the various avast! shields one by one to see if you can identify one that is causing your problem?
Does turning off the Web Shield remove the problem with web page loading?
Yes I have checked Task Manager and have the same number of processes running with nothing new showing up. I have disabled the webshield and it made a big difference in speed and when I disable on access scanners, well everything runs quick again and the slowdowns go away. Definately something to do with the Avast resident modules but it seems as if the webshield is only part of it.
I use WebWasher (to filter ads). It runs as a proxy. Could that be the problem. The internet access is not slow here, but I can’t scroll a web page before all items are loaded when the WebShield is on. If I set WebShield to “Pause” then all is normal. Must be a WebShield thing.
BTW: Is WebShield necessary? Won’t Standard Shield catch all?
WebWasher may have an effect if web shield is monitoring content and then WebWasher is filtering ads. You would need to ensure that the two proxies are working together and it would be better if ad content was removed before web shield monitors. That may well not be possible.
My Firewall can filter ad content, as can my browser firefox, all without having to use a proxy, so I don’t need another ad blocker or the extra complexability.
Web Shield in my opinion is absolutly essential, Standard Shield is trying to catch something that is already on your HDD (which may be more difficult to remove), Web Shield can block before it gets on your HDD. No contest, protection in depth.
I don’t really know how to control this as avast! now uses the transparent “hook on” to the port 80. If I could use the old way (avast! beeing a proxy) I could choose who connected to the Internet. Then WebWasher could connect to the net and filter the ads, THEN avast! could scan the rest of the page, THEN IE6 could get the content
The page is much smaller after WebWasher has scanned it (all commercial itemt are removed from the HTML code, not just hidden) so commercial images and scripts won’t even reach IE (love WebWasher)
But if I add WebWashers proxy port here (8080) and uncheck the “Ignore local communication”. Won’t avast! check twice (first on port 80 before WebWasher and then again later after WebWasher on port 8080) and slow down things even more that now?
I see that with the standard settings avast! will monitor port 80, and hook on before WebWasher (scanning things WebWasher later removes), and that’s a waste (it removes HUGE items
I can’t remove port 80 from the list either can I, or is that safe (all traffic on port 80 from IE is routed trough WebWasher on port 8080).
Or will other programs (not routing through WebWasher as a proxy) then be unprotected (if they use port 80 directly that is).
