I am running Avast Free Antivirus 2015 on a Windows XP SP3 computer.
Earlier this week (probably 26th November) I was notified to upgrade to a new version of Avast. This happens from time to time, and the process is normally satisfactory. Indeed, the upgrade appeared to finish correctly. But I noticed that the icon in the system tray appeared to be permanently spinning. OK, its decided to do a general scan of the computer which does take some time.
But it is always spinning now, and it appears to be taking up a large %age of my computer resource. Everything runs very slowly, cpu usage and disk usage are high. When I disable avast, things reverts to their usual speed.
I often follow the ‘When in doubt re-install’ philosophy, so I uninstalled avast via the uninstall option in add remove programs, re-booted, and visited the web site to get the current version and re-installed.
But it is still crippling running of my computer.
Has this happened to anyone else? Have avast added a new ‘feature’? Is there a cure?
Let me also add that I applied the update to my wife’s Windows 8.1 laptop – where there are no problems!
I often follow the ‘When in doubt re-install’ philosophy, so I uninstalled avast via the uninstall option in add remove programs, re-booted, and visited the web site to get the current version and re-installed.
try again using the removal tool
www.avast.com > Menu > Support > Downloads > Uninstall Utility
Dinner cooked, eaten and all washed up. (Shepard’s pie with carrots, leeks, brussels sprouts from the garden, and a freshly made fruit salad). So I am feeling very mellow. Until I try using the computer that is.
I’ve downloaded avastclear.exe, and ran it in Safe mode.
Re-booted and ran avast_free_antivirus_setup_online.exe (which takes nearly 15 minutes as I have a very slow broadband connection.
After installation I left the computer for 15 minutes without starting any other programs. The Avast Icon was spinning all the time, but cpu load was low.
I’ve started Firefox, and Word to compose this message, Icon still spinning, but cpu load low, although there is continuous disk activity of about 3mb / second (about 40%), but occasionally it maxes out to 12mb / second.
The cpu load appears to be lower than before the uninstall. Avast appears to be using about 4% cpu load.
But when I start being ‘busy’ on the computer it feels very sluggish again – although perhaps not as bad as before. I would not find this level of performance acceptable.
When I look at the Avast statistics tab there is a continuous list of file names which are being scanned, about 2 a second. The most common file being scanned is Program Files \ Anvir Task Manager \ anvir.exe. It appears to be scanning all the currently activated programs, is this normal behaviour?
What else can I try? I don’t want to keep repeating the uninstall and reinstall cycle as it takes 30 minutes a time with re-boots and downloads.
That is because it is monitoring anvir task manager doing its thing, every time anvir does something Avast will monitor. So in this instance Avast is doing its job of monitoring programmes that are starting/writing on your computer http://www.anvir.com/
But presumably it was doing this checking in the 2014 version I was running until a few days ago. I never had any issues with Avast slowing my computer down no matter how many programs I was running. I wish I hadn’t allowed the upgrade to go through - but I have been using the product for 3 or 4 years, all other upgrades have been fine - I trusted the company to look after me. Thats what you want from an AV company, to be able to trust them in keeping your computer healthy.
I recently upgraded to Avast! 2015, Program version 2015.10.0.2208 (free version), running under Windows XP SP3, and encountered the same problem. The file “AvastSvc.exe” was constantly using about 25% of my CPU resources (as reported under Task Manager), and the Avast! icon in my toolbar was constantly spinning, indicating that files were continuously being scanned. This would not stop, even hours after I last did anything on the computer.
I opened the Avast user interface, and clicked on Statistics > Realtime data. There I could see that the problem was with File System Shield. In the list of Last Scanned Items, the file “k:\Program Files\NETGEAR\WG111v3\WG111v3.exe” was appearing over and over again. On my computer, this program controls my wireless router.
So I added “k:\Program Files\NETGEAR\WG111v3\WG111v3.exe” to my exclusion list. I did this by going to Settings > Active Protection. I then went to File System Shield, and clicked on Customize > Exclusions. I added the aforementioned file to the list, and left the R, W, and X boxes checked.
After doing this, the Avast icon quit constantly spinning, and my CPU usage returned to normal.