I’m using a low-end computer (300MHz CPU , 128MB RAM ) and when the updating starts , a process called avast.setup ,although running at below normal priority , sucks up one third of my CPU and uses much more CPU power than the other programs ::)(even those with priority set to above normal and high).
I was hoping for setting process priority to low , but apparently I can’t do that manually from the task manager … so I would like to ask if there is a way to permanently decrease priority of it ?
AFAIK with XP, ‘avast.setup’ is hard-coded to use no more than 30% CPU time. This is usually fine but your PC specs are so “humble” as to make even 30% an unbearable burden.
What I do in similar circumstances, only if you can diligently remember to update manually, is turn off automatic updating/notifying completely because even auto checking for updates will drive you mad. :o
As Vladimyr mentions the update in XP and above is CPU limited but that is really is little help when you are running XP on such a limited system.
I believe that your CPU is less than the XP minimum requirements and 128MB RAM is half of the XP minimum requirements, so when you add other applications you are going to need at the very least additional RAM. With 256MB the minimum for XP, 512MB would make it much better and 1GB even better.
However, your CPU at 300Mhz you are probably on a very old system that can’t take that amount of RAM.
You don’t mention when this problem is most difficult, I suspect at boot ?
If so you could delay the update check until after your system has stabilised after boot (I will await your answers).
What is your connection method, dial-up or broadband ?
as you mentioned, avast.setup priority is set to be below normal. What this means is not that it should keep the procesor IDLE, it just means that it should let the CPU available for other processes if such exist.
IDLE processor will do the same amount of work for you as free RAM does = no work! I assume you want some other task to be using the CPU. Which are those? Are these task using higher CPU percentage when avast update is not running? That would surely mean that avast.setup is stealing some CPU time from their time.
However there are other resources, namely disk, and as 300Mhz is pretty low, the compression of the VPS during update will take quite a long time (using disk during this period) which will definitely slow things down. Sorry for that, it really is a slower machine. In avast5 the update process is improved quite a bit, so hopefully wouldn’t need that much resources.
I have a 512K connection and I hibernate instead of boot (it’s the only method of booting up XP with such horribly low specs ) , so the only problem is the hdd.
I hoped that putting the update at the “end of the line” would solve the problem , but looking again You’re right , CPU is not 100% used , the disk is the bottleneck.
So , another question , any way to reduce the disk activity of the update ?
More RAM, the only reason the disk accesses are happening with such frequency is because the virtual RAM is being used and that is simply a large file on the hard disk. So rather than a lot of the information being retained in memory it has to be constantly swapped out to virtual memory (pagefile.sys).
You have less than the minimum RAM just to run XP add to that any other complexity and you get a lot of swapping out to the hard disk. The more RAM you have the less this has to happen.