Avast slowing down internet browsing

I’m an avid fan of Avast as my go-to anti-virus, I often recommend it to friends who ask which anti-virus they should download, but I’m not too sure if I would recommend it to my friends now.

Lately I’ve been experiencing very slow page loading times through my internet browser (Chrome). Initially I tried reinstalling Chrome and using a different browser (Safari and Firefox), but they all suffered from the same problems when loading pages - Pages take at least ten seconds to load, formatting goes funny on occasion, images load very slowly (if they even load at all). None of these issues occur when I load the respective pages on my iPad (loading the desktop version of the pages). In addition I scanned my computer for malware and viruses with no positive results on either.

Eventually I deduced that the root cause of my problems was Avast’s Web Shield. Disabling this shield eliminated all the problems I had been experiencing.

I hope these problems get fixed in the future as this feature has blocked numerous malicious attempts made towards my computer in the past.

  • Which avast!..?? (Free/Pro/IS/Premier)
  • Which version…??
  • OS…?? (32/64 Bit…? - which SP…?)
  • Other security related software installed…??
  • Which AV did you use before avast!..??

Avast Free Antivirus v8.0.1489
Win7 Pro 64bit
No other AV installed, or used prior to Avast on this computer

Is/was there a pre-installed AV…??

No, only Avast was installed on this computer.

See, if that helps…

  1. Download avast! Free Antivirus: http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe
  2. Follow instructions: http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility (Run this tool for all prior installed avast! versions…!!)
  3. Reinstall avast! with the downloaded installer from point 1.
  4. Reboot.