I installed Avast 4 Home on my Vista machine and after doing so, coping files from a shared folder on another computer to this computer is horribly slow (like 100 times slower than before installing Avast). Worse still, uninstalling Avast doesn’t help.
Here’s the complete scenario:
I have two machines, one with Windows Vista 64-bit and the other with Windows XP 32-bit.
I installed Avast 4 Home 4.7.942 on the Vista 64 box, and upgraded it to 4.7.1001.
I then tried to copy files from the XP box (which had Panda Antivirus instead of Avast) to the Vista 64 box and noticed it was horribly slow (200-400 KB/s), but coping the files in the other direction was fine (20-40 MB/s).
I thought it may have been because my XP box was messed up since I was having other problems with it. So, I installed Windows Vista 32-bit on it (clean install, not an upgrade).
I could copy files to the new Vista 32 box (no Avast) at normal speed from either my Vista 64 box or my friend’s laptop.
However, copying files from any box to the Vista 64 box (with Avast) was still horribly slow.
In order to see if Avast was causing the problem, I installed Avast 4.7.942 on the Vista 32 box, and upgraded it to v. 4.7.1001.
Now copying files to the Vista 32 box is horrible slow (it was fine before installing Avast). Sure enough, Avast is the culprit!
Then, I uninstalled Avast from the Vista 32 box (and rebooted), and it was still slow.
I ran aswclear (and rebooted), and it was still slow.
I downloaded and installed Avast 4.7.1001, and it was still slow.
I uninstalled and ran aswclear again, and it was still slow.
So, now I’m stuck with both my computers copying files really slow. I eliminated the possibility that anything other than Avast is causing the problem. I would like to find out how to fix the problem without resorting reinstalling Windows. I appreciate any feedback on this.
and welcome to the avast forums. Indeed an interesting problem - and unusual one, I should add.
I’d suggest to first make sure that no avast drivers are left on the machine after uninstallation. To check this, please go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers and make sure there’s no sys files whose name starts with asw (i.e. asw*.sys). These are the avast drivers.
I’m trying to think of a global system setting that the avast installer might change (and leave changed upon uninstall), but frankly, I can’t think of any.
I’m really curious about the real cause of the issue. Hopefully, we’ll find it.
Thanks for the suggestion Vlk. I have already done that and I didn’t find any asw*.* files. I made sure to search hidden and system files too.
Some more info:
Both systems are using the Nvidia nForce and GeForce drivers. The 32-bit box has a nForce 4 MB and the 64-bit box has a 680i MB. I suppose it’s possible that there is a conflict between Avast and the nForce drivers.
Also, the only other things I have installed on the 32-bit box are Adobe Acrobat Reader and all the Windows updates. The machine was fine with just those installed.
DethCreeper, is it only an issue when copying files over the network? I.e. for local copying there’s no problem?
And what about other network transfers (other than SMB)? Are they also slow?
(try e.g. this tiny tool http://www.netchain.com/netcps/ to test the speed – read the readme.txt file for instructions on how to use it).
I reinstalled the nVidia drivers, but that didn’t make any difference.
Copying file slocally is very fast, even between physical disk drives.
NetCPS copied 100 MB in 16.58 seconds. But using either xcopy (using mapped drive), Robocopy (not using mapped drive), or Windows Explorer to copy 373 MB is taking ~63 minutes, when it should only take ~1 minute. It seems the problem is in the SMB and not Windows Explorer scanning for images or something like that.
