Recently my PC’s been taken ages to start up. Seems the main culprit is Avast free, taking over 106 seconds to load. Does anyone know why this might be?
Well you’ve left us pretty clueless 
some info about your system and other security installed, and recent changes before this started occuring ?
Vista SP2 32bit. Comodo firewall. Was wondering if there might be any conflicts but can’t think of any. Windows firewall and Defender are both disabled, and I can’t think of any changes that might have caused this problem.
Have’nt really got much in the way of any ideas for you but did you try a repair and reboot ? are avast shields are all functioning correctly, anything out of the ordinary in task manager.
I have long had the same problem which I put down to a combination of Avast, Comodo Firewall and Rapport, and possibly some anti-spyware as well. If you put Process Explorer in your Start Menu you can see who is doing what and when (beyond that it gets way too complicated) which is of some comfort instead of just watching the paint dry. It takes far longer than 106 secs before my PC is fully functional so you can count yourself lucky. If you find a solution I’d like to know! [XP Home]
I think you may find that Rapport is the blockage - I know it was on my Vista system a while back - so I uninstalled it
If watching the paint dry is the price I have to pay to avoid Zeus (?) and co hacking into my bank account, it’s a no-brainer! Until someone comes along with a better solution. Nice to know the cause however, tks.
I use XP/SP3
yes, I also experienced the results of having Rapport on 2 of my machines. As soon as rapport was removed the problem was no more 
My bank originally made rapport available, but have since introduced a much sounder sytem for security, hence I was happy to remove rapport
My bank uses a double password system - the second part is via a dropdown and mouse click. Track that keyloggers ;D
I got the impression that Rapport is not linked to one bank account but offers protection to a variety of online accounts, if by no means all, some of which could be more or less secure than others. It would be interesting to know what other systems offer comparable levels of security but with a reduced boot time lag.
@ the OP What other security software are you using/running at start-up? 106 seconds is not that long a little over 1 1/2 minutes. ???
I suspect that the operative word is - what other software leaves a resident footprint (or whatever the term is) even when not actively running. I run SuperAntiSpyware and Spybot Search & Destroy from time to time, also Malwarebytes if I think there’s something serious. I believe that Spybot has some resident thing but am not sure about the others. I know that if I try to “do something” before the PC has settled down it goes on strike and I have to start again, so to avoid arguments I usually go away and make a cup of tea while it is waking up.
Just Avast and Comodo firewall, plus winpatrol free. The 106 secs is just for Avast. Total startup time is a fair bit longer.
- Which avast!..?? (Free/Pro/IS)
- Which version…??
@ Telegraph_Sam,
Users have had problems in the past with SB & Destroy, esp. if you use Teatimer. I would suggest uninstalling Teatimer first, then SB & Destroy to see if this resolves your problem.
Uninstall Spybot S&D w/Teatimer: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/howto/uninstall.html.
- How to disable Spybot-S&D (temporarily). http://www.safer-networking.org/en/howto/disable.html . Even though it says temporarily, the resident parts of SpyBot Search & Destroy must be enabled manually if disabled in this manner. TeaTimer doesn’t load into memory at all when disabled.
- SB fails to detect: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/65492.aspx
I’ve had suspicions about Spybot and Teatimer (which I don’t really understand) but have taken the view that in the end the system “does something” in terms of increased security. If this is so then by now I can live with the long boot times. If SB is truly redundant then I can disable / delete.
Looking at Process Explorer during boot up (not easy to understand!) I get the impression that Avast takes up quite a bit of available system resources, which is of course reasonable if it is protecting me.
My version is Avast Free 6.0.1203 (on Windows XP). I have not yet psyched myself up to uninstall and upgrade to v 7 …
Avast 7 free.
And which version…??
7.0.1426 but Avast has been slow to load for some time, going back to 6, but 7 takes even longer to load.
Try this setting…
- avast! GUI → Settings → Troubleshooting → Enable: “Load avast! services only after other system services”
- Click OK.
- Reboot.