I started using Avast Free back with Avast 4.8 and it’s been a great anti virus since. But now alll of a sudden with Avast Free version 2015.10.0.2208 which is the current version, I;m experiencing a lot of slowdown. I run Avast Free on an old Win XP sp3 that I test and save drivers on, and on a Win Vista. When I click the Chrome icon or Firefox, it takes 5-8 seconds to open and another 8-10 seconds to load and show the homepage. At the moment I’m using Panda Free on one and Ad-Aware on the other and both have faster time than Avast.
I would love to go back to Avast Free because it’s the best. I hope the slowdown is addressed and taken care of in the next version. Most of my family, friends and clients use Avast in one form or another because of my recommendations. Thank you for your time.
Nevermind, I also dumped Panda Free for Bitdefender Free, a whole lot faster. Thanks for you help.
Don’t forget you now also have less protection.
It is not really clear because some people from avast say this month and some say next month,
but a new version is released soon.
Let’s hope it works a lot better when it comes to speed.
Hey Eddy, I know about having less protection and I really hope the new version is a lot better, but the difference is remarkable. With BD Chrome loads and opens in 3-4 seconds, but with the present version of Avast Free it’s 10 seconds or even more, so I know it must be putting a strain on my resources. I really like Avast and all my clients use it on my recommendation even the pay versions, so I really hope the next version is a keeper. Thanks.
more protect more slow 
That’s not really an answer hangvo2609, and neither is it true. My cousin is a person that goes to “dangerous” sites and has threats blocked constantly and has never caught a virus or malware “yet” and he uses Panda Free since it first came out and has never had a slowdown even on his low spec computers.
All right, after trying various free antiviruses, I found Bitdefender Free to be very,good with almost no slowdown, but decided on Panda free because I reinstalled the latest Avast and it slowed down my browsers and surfing to a crawl. Panda free has my computer jumping from site to site like it’s a new machine. Thank you for all your help, it’s very appreciated.
The degree of protection depends on what you source, AV comparative and Av test consistently put panda above Avast. I am sure though you can source someone else that says Avast is better. I personally don’t know I personally haven’t been hit by any virus for years no matter what AV i use, but just from experience using them both Panda heuristic are overly sensitive tagging things malicious too frequently, a problem if you are a programmer.
As for slowdown with Avast, I do see some of that. Avast webshield takes needless cpu cyles scanning all traffic even from sources that don’t need to be scanned, traffic for example Origin or Steam and exclusions don’t work correctly for web shield either.
Avast webshield takes needless cpu cyles scanning all traffic even from sources that don't need to be scanned, traffic for example Origin or Steam and exclusions don't work correctly for web shield either.ALL sources need to be scanned. What is safe today can be malicious tomorrow. And the exclusions work correctly.
Hey guys, I know for a fact that Avast is the best out there, I’ve used it forever and I honestly wish I still did, but the slowdown is so drastic. With BD or Panda, I click the icon and before I blink, my homepage it staring me in the face. But I really do wish I was back to Avast. May be in the very near future.
Update. Even after the new versions of Avast, the only browser that still takes a long time to open and load is still Chrome. Opera is fast and Firefox is faster than before but Chrome still takes 12 to 25 seconds to show the homepage. Thanks anyway.
You don’t mention anything about your system spec - OS, CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.
I have 12 tabs that open when Firefox starts - for some considerable time it takes about 10-12 seconds to display firefox. I have a whole slew of add-ons, which would also have a loading impact.
Over this time (excuse the pun) changes in firefox have been the reason for the change in delay and hasn’t made an appreciable difference with updates to avast.
This is on my XP system (see my signature) and that may well differ to yours in that the HTTPS scanning in the web shield isn’t available in XP or Vista. That may make a difference in page loading
Hey DavidR, it’s a XP Pro sp3 Pentium 4 with 4 GB RAM installed but 3.62 showing. Every antivirus including the heavy ones like Ad Aware, Avira, don’t slow anything down on the system at all, I’ve even tried Bitdefender Free and Panda and Chrome opens and loads in a second or 2. Now I know I can live without Chrome but I just don’t understand because up until the last 2-3 versions Avast worked great. I even installed Avast 5 and updated the definitions and the engine but kept version 5 interface and it never slowed down anything. That’s what confuses me.
Having tried all of these other AV, I just wonder if there aren’t any remnants after uninstalling.
I think a very good clean up is required.
General: Uninstalling a third-party antivirus software - See avast FAQ article, [ur]http://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB11#artTitle[/url].
Having done that a clean reinstall of avast.
I think this one is going done as a mystery David. The install with the Avast 5 worked good, but it seems like when the interface changed, so did the performance . And like I said, it’s mainly Chrome, Firefox and Opera are not bad. Also, this last try was on a clean reinstall of Windows. Thanks for trying, I’ll wait and try the next version.
No problem, sorry it couldn’t have been more productive.
Its just weird that my XP system doesn’t appear to have any issue with the latest avast version.
David, I think it’s because of me having a Pentium 4 and you having a dual core. I have 4 GB of RAM but only 3.62 GB shows, and you probably show all 4 GB. I guess. Thanks, stay cool buddy.
A lot depends on what tool you are using to record the RAM - Task Manager > Performance tab shows Physical Memory (K) as 3669330, so that is broadly in line with yours.
Other tools, System Information for Windows (SIW) shows all 4096MB. Some (Speccy) even report only 3.5GB Total Physical, yet Memory - Size as 4096MB. Essentially you have as much as XP can use.