WebShield is slowing down my internet access too much. For example a 2.5 MB test file takes 4 seconds to load with WebShield active but only 3 seconds with WebShield paused. I can also notice a big difference with how quickly websites appear on my monitor screen.
So I want to disable WebShield permanently. How?
If I just pause it, it reactivates when I restart my computer, and I don’t see any way to kill it from avast settings.
Disable it and click ‘Yes’ to keep changes.
Other option in going into its settings and disabling it, or even remove any port of the redirection settings.
But, remember, you’re decreasing security very badly if you don’t have Standard Shield at High level of protection.
OK, thanks for the tip. I’ve changed Standard Shield to the high setting and it doesn’t slow down things, so will keep it that way.
Well… sure it is slowing down… the best balance between performance and protection is the Normal level, not the High one.
?
I have no idea what you mean, or why you said it. But I’m happy now. 
I said the only truth we can expect with Standard Shield at High level. It does consume more resources than the Normal level of security. But, if you disable WebShield to gain on Internet speed, you`ll lose on Standard Shield (local) scanning time. There is no magic: protection requires resources.
For example a 2.5 MB test file takes 4 seconds to load with WebShield active but only 3 seconds with WebShield paused.Wow ... I can't believe you are willing to risk getting your computer infected to save just one second of time. :o ::)
To be more accurate, he’s getting a 33% download speed decrease as the cost of the protection (files might be much bigger than 2.4 MB). But I agree, it doesn’t seem an undue price to pay. If everything took twice as long it might start to be a concern.
To be more accurate, we can’t really say if it is 1 second penalty for every download (even for large files) or indeed 33% download speed decrease – just from this one measurement.
I have to wonder what is causing the slowdown - especially given a world in which some ISPs provide download speed boosting in the first few seconds of a download if the bandwidth is available. So such short downloads can be variable (and it makes most speedtest sites unreliable).
I just tried to repeat this with a 40Mb file. With the avast Webshield active the download took 13 seconds. With the avast Webshield terminated it took 14 seconds (terminated not paused - in paused avast still intercepts the activity it just does not scan the stream). I do not doubt that the report is correct - its just that in every case where I have seen a report of this kind I have never been able to measure the slowdown on any of my systems.
This week I have done some measurements of the speed impact of WebShield scans on our local network. I was able to download 1GB file in roughly 27-31 seconds. This gives us the speed of about 37 MB/s = 296 mbit with WebShield, and about 45 MB/s = 360mbit without WebShield (if I remember correctly).
It certainly shows some slowdown, but since the machine I was testing on hasn’t the fastest hard drive on earth I guess I can count the slowdown on the disk - since indeed WebShield makes an extra copy on the harddrive (in the temp folder) and with these high speeds we are certainly attacking the maximum disk speed a lot. (my laptop disk never gives more 8 MB/s, so I can hardly expect such speeds on laptop as well).