I have been a happy Avast user since 2003, used it at home, in my company and have used it for the companies I used to support. But no more, I simply cannot use an AV program that regularly uses between 80% and 100% of my CPU doing nothing and eats up around 100 MB of RAM even with all shields off…
Even when I disable all shields and having nothing but Windows XP SP3 running the AvastSvc.exe hogs the CPU almost non stop.
This started happening about 5 days ago to all 3 of my computers, I have ensured everything is up to date, uninstalled malwarebytes, made sure no other Anti-Virus programs are running and still the same thing. The systems are basically unusable due to the Avast use of the CPU. The most amazing thing is that this even happens with all shields disabled.
This was happening to my Toshiba laptop with 1.7GHz and 512 MB RAM, to my work machine with 2.8GHz and 1 GB RAM and to my gaming system with 3.0GHz and 2 GB RAM.
I have removed Avast 5 from all 3 systems and installed Avira, now my systems are back to working again.
I’ll try Avast again someday once the bugs have been worked out of version 5.
Not sure how it could be the install as this happened on all three of my computers. And one of them (the gaming one) I wiped blank, reinstalled Windows XP, installed Avast 5, and that was it, as soon as the system rebooted AvastSvc.exe went crazy and acted as before.
No problems here, either, on my XP Pro SP3 machine, though I did have an odd persistent surge in “System” CPU use that appeared to be associated with the newly installed v5.0, but that resolved itself after a reboot.
Well pal, we need the version number you were using if you want us to help you, because that statement of latest version doesn’t help, because avast 5 since release date have had some more builds, and the latest is v5.0.462. And if you were using a previous build, maybe the newest have that issues solved. So, what version you were using?
The CPU hogging problems are usually fairly easy to diagnose - we just need a dump of the offending process. It’s usually very fast then to explain what’s going on.
i do have similar problem, cpu usage of 40-50% on laptop with no active scans going on.
avast version 5.0.462, virus definition 100311-0
started few days ago.
laptop specs: intel Core2 Duo CPU T5870 @ 2.00GHz, 2gb ram.
Well the last machine was uninstalled yesterday afternoon, and that was after I had just run both update modules, so I guess the version specifically was what was current yesterday at about 2:00PM.
Mmmm, i’m the same, i dont know if u are using v4.8 or v5. But what it seems to me is that you are using version 5.0.462. Or am i wrong? Is the avast icon blue or orange?
Since I’ve switched to the new avast release, I notice that the “system” process sometimes uses almost 100% CPU.
I didn’t connect that with avast until I decided today to investigate further.
After using tools like process explorer and kernrate, I realized that the culprit was actually an avast process.
I turned off all the avast services and magically, the system process went down to almost 0%. I turned them on and it went back to 90%.
So… good bye avast… too bad… I have to find a new antivirus
No problems here running Avast 5. Task Manager shows 0%-2% like nothing. If there is a higher number, it settles down right away.
Instead of uninstalling Avast, you might want to check the number of Start up Processes in Task Manager, and use MS Config to disable the services you don’t need. (30 or less start up items is good, but the less, the better.) Avast Version 5 seems to be less draining on resources than version 4. Sometimes I will get right-menu fade-ins if I have tons of stuff on the clipboard or a huge picture in memory, but since upgrading to version 5, it has been less than before:
Here are instructions on how to use MS Config. Make sure that you scroll down and select the correct OS before starting the process:
I am currently running Windows XP pro sp3 Intel dual core 2 GB ram
Avast is Version 5.0418
At startup AvastSvc.exe runs for approximately 5 minutes, taking 90-100% CPU. It does not matter if I log in as Admin, or user on Windows (permissions make no difference).
I went onto settings in Avast, and changed the startup settings so that Avast does not start until other programs start, and that changed nothing so far, I am still going through settings and trying to figure out what exactly is happening.
I have went through the startup items, and I have the bare minimum running there, Basically what I need for windows to start;), no Torrent programs at startup, nothing else major. Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor, Wireless Modem, OO LED, and Avast are the only non-system boot items. I am on a laptop that I have owned for 2 years, this is a new problem, there has been no major hardware changes, and yes I tried rebooting :P.
Like most users when I start my computer, I kinda need my computer ;). I am in the computer field, and though I know I can make my system run very well, I don’t look like I know what I am doing when I am working on a clients system, start mine up, and have to wait 5 minutes to be able to access my own personal computer.
If I can’t get this problem sorted out I will have to go back (and I believe it is a step back) to AVG :-[.
I have the same problem here even with the 462 update and seems to get worse a lot faster when viewing flash video files on the net from youtube etc…
It is not a problem with anythign else other than Avast. My machine is XP SP3 with a recent fresh install. AV 4.8 was flawless and the update to 5.0 brought about this problem.
I am going to monitor till the next release and if it is not fixed then I am going to have to recommend a different AV to my readers at Tweaknews.net.
:o Jesus Christ, I was going to upgrade to version 5, but now that I’ve seen this topic, I think I will be staying with version 4.8 until this is fixed.
There are around a million people using Avast 5 and only a few people are having this problem. So I’d guess the chances of you having this problem if you upgraded to Avast 5 is very small. I would bet money that the people with this problem have software or hardware that is conflicting with Avast 5.
I have installed Avast 5 either free or paid versions on close to a dozen PC’s running XP, Vista or Win 7 and have never seen this problem.
When I upgraded my first PC to Avast 5 I made an image of my boot drive before hand just to be safe though I never needed it. If you have a backup program such as TrueImage you have nothing to loose, give it a shot!
