In the last weeks, Avast has been using a noticeably high amount of CPU - like 7-15% on a 13700k, and makes the whole system fell sluggish.
If I restart the computer it goes away for a while, but it will eventually come back after a random amount of time.
Avast Premium Security Version: 24.8.6127 (build 24.8.9372.870)
CPU: 13700k
OS: Windows 11 Pro 23H2 22631.4037
I forgot to add that after a while, if I try to disable the shields, the UI freezes, and it’s impossible to interact with the app any longer.
I’m pretty sure it’s still running in the background, but I can’t interact with it in any way.
And I forgot to add it, but in normal operation, avast only take 0-1% CPU on my system.
If two or more AV’s are active at the same time, they might get triggered by each other. You end up with duelling AV’s eating up CPU cycles.
This is probably not what’s going on. Think what software might have changed the last couple of weeks. For instance a search tool indexing which then causes Avast to scan every file it reads. Something like that.
Or maybe it’s heuristics being silly. You could try running without Behavior Shield and see if that solves the problem.
I’m seeing one core fully utilised by avastsvc.exe, seems to have started after an avast update. Disabling the shields for 10min had no effect except now the UI no longer responds. I’m now regretting having paid for it.
Well, I fixed it by removing it and replacing it with something that actually works.
I see no interest towards finding out what actually causes the issue, which means there is no chance that it will actually be fixed, so I can’t use the product any longer.
It’s a shame really, as I was really satisfied with the product, aside from the annoying popups, and I have personally installed it on dozens of computers.
I’m saddened to see that the company learned nothing since the issues with the firewall causing BSODs, where the only workaround was un-installing the firewall.
Well, I wish you all the best of luck with your future endeavors.
This has been my experience. The CPU usage went down after an Avast application update. It still seems to like hogging too much CPU but, when I notice this I just reboot my machine and it fixes it. Hope this helps. Seems potentially something is getting hung in Avast to cause this as I have tried turning off all shields while it’s happening and the issue persists until I reboot which turns the shields back on but the CPU % goes down. I found a easy way to detect when this is happening is to setup a custom fan curve for your fans based on CPU temp. Could take some digging to find what CPU temp Avast drives your system to while the issue is occuring.