I love avast, but it's driving me nuts!

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hiya,

I’ve been an avast user for years. Love it. (Miss the DOS version, though. I so want to build a DOS box to play with). Anywho, I’m just a regular home user, not a business or anything, so I’ve always stuck with the free home version, and have had no regrets, at least until now, because I think a critical (for my sanity) feature has been removed. Simply put, avast is constantly scanning my hard drives. I can’t turn it off without terminating or pausing the entire standard module. It’s eating up a ton of resources, causing my system to lag and periodically freeze-up for a couple of seconds at a time. Needless to say this makes doing anything beyond frustrating. Really fun when you’re downloading a large file from a server that doesn’t support resuming and your browser locks-up for a second and kills the download.

I swear that this was something I’ve turned off dozens of times on avast installs (I’ve turned-on many friends to avast over the years, and usually set it up for them), but now I simply cannot find anywhere to turn off the scanning of existing system files. I always set it up to monitor only newly downloaded or created files, or files being activated, etc. In other words, I keep avast looking outward at anything coming in, or anything “in” that’s suddenly executed.

To make matter worse, I recently bought a drobo. That’s one of those little boxes that you stack hard drives in and it treats them all as one drive while in actuality it’s making duplicate copies of everything so, in the event of drive failure, you don’t lose your data (sort of like a RAID setup, but easier). And now avast is scanning them all the time, putting a lot of wear on the drives they don’t need (and that I can’t afford to replace any time soon if they fail).

Please, can someone tell me if resident scanning has somehow been changed, and if I’m still able to disable or limit it? This is driving me absolutely bonkers.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

PS. Almost forgot. This isn’t just my problem. A friend of mine, whom I recommended avast to recently, has been having this same problem in recent weeks with his laptop (he plays games and watches videos on it all the time, and avast has been making that impossible to do). We spent a good hour combing over avast’s Preferences, trying to find someplace to limit the scans, but neither of us was able to locate the proper settings (not anything under HELP).

2

Set the Standard Shield to Normal.
If it does not work, I suggest uninstall/install again.

Any other security program that could interfere? Firewall?

3

That was the first thing I checked, but it’s already on Normal. No customization.

And no, nothing else getting in the way. It’s definitely avast that’s doing it. I can see the filenames being displayed for every file it scans.

4

Please, post some of the file names and paths.

5

I am having the same problem.

Originally, I thought that it was related to the database update foul-up from last week when some of my files were moved into the ‘Chest.’ Now, I know that last week problem had nothing to do with it. Indeed, this past weekend, due to a hard-drive crash, I had to re-install all my software after re-formatting it. Yet as long as aVast is running everything runs slow (the icon in the ‘system’ tray keeps churning away). As soon as I stop aVast, everything works once again at regular speed.

I noticed that most of the slow downs seem to be related to Microsoft products: when I run IE8, it takes forever for a page to load; it takes a very long time to open a Word and/or Excel document. During my re-install last weekend, I also noticed that copying files from my backup hard-drive onto my new one took a very long time for files with the following extensions: ‘doc,’ ‘xls’ and ‘txt.’ The other extensions did not seem to be affected as much.

I am using Comodo as my free firewall, PC Tools Spyware Doctor for spyware protection, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and ad-Aware for malware protection and aVast as my anti-virus product. I have reached the point where aVast is stopped most of the time so that my computer runs more smoothly. I am actually considering moving on to another anti-virus product.

6

Odd behavior – I’ve never noticed that on my system, which is adequate but not exactly speed-of-light, and I’ve got my Standard shield set to high.

About the only time (that I’m aware of) when avast makes a noticeable speed difference is if I’m moving (i.e., copy-then-delete) large numbers of known good files between folders. And simply pausing the Standard shield while I do that does make a big difference.

7

@ debw

Ad-Aware has not kept up with the times and is not worth the hard disk space it consumes nor the system resources it needs.

Spyware Doctor consumes much more resorces than Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

Comodo is a big system resource consumer and read this:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=46737.0

How much RAM does the system have?

8

In terms of RAM, I have 3GB of it. I am posting this reply from work. As a result, I don’t know the status of my aVast Standard Shield. If it is not set to Normal, I’ll try to do that for a test.

  • I have been considering going away with Ad-Aware since I discovered Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware. I reinstalled without thinking because it was part of my ‘script;’
  • Spyware Doctor might be using more resources than Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware but I like its interface better. Furthermore, I had just renew my subscription when I discovered Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware;
  • In terms of Comodo, I did not know about its ‘bad’ reputation until earlier today when I found the post for which you provided the link to. I am know comparing ‘PC Tools Firewall Plus’, ‘Outpost Firewall Free 2009’ or ‘Online Armor FREE’ as a replacement.
9

When I got home, I checked the status of ‘Standard Shield.’ It was set to ‘High’. I changed it to ‘Normal.’ It did not make any difference. When aVast runs, everything else runs slow. I then turned off all programs but my firewall and aVast. Everything would still run slow. I even tried to use Windows Firewall instead of Comodo to no avail. Every time that I turned aVast off, everything would be back to full speed.

The weird part is that I also have a laptop with the same softwares installed that runs fine with or without aVast.

At this point at don’t know what else to do but removing aVast.

10 
 I would say Avast  Scanning is a Result.

Look for the Cause for Avast Scanning.

11

I found when I (briefly) had AdAware installed that things slowed down a bit, plus the program was fairly buggy, so I removed it.
AdAware runs as a service, even when not active or open, so that consumes some (small) resource. You also have Spyware Doctor (I’ve read about this being a big resource hog) and you have the makings for a likely confliction of some kind.
You might find if you change AV’s, you still have the same problem. (Hard to know unless you try.)

Did you, when you installed Comodo firewall, install only the firewall, avoiding the installation of the AV component? That would definitely be suspect.

12

What a load of FUD about Comodo it’s lucky I am here to put things right Comodo sells digital certificates, (which in laymans terms is the people that enable the yellow padlock when you go on secure sites.) They offer 2 types one is the normal bog standard one with hardly no checks which is used by SOME people to do bad things. When they do the certs are revoked quicker then with any other cert provider I might add. They also offer EV certs which is Comodo’s baby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Validation_Certificate with a lot more checks. To say the firewall is bad because of a handful of certs they offer is madness. Yes it is only a handful as they offer lots more EV certs then normal certs. Don’t believe the hype. As for resource use give me a break. ::slight_smile:

13

I use Spyware Doctor and was not going to renew as it was a resource hog. When V7.0 came out it had been totally redesigned and is great. Hardly notice it’s there. I also run PCTools Firewall Plus.

PIII 1.2 512 Ram. XP

14

numbers ??? ;D send us a freaking screenshot of your task manager with CIS running so that we can observe the disaster … I for one have issues with Comodo policies in a general way, but the bashing must be founded on something, and not on the hearsay from someone who’s most likely never run it before and keep posting again and again the same freaking link to the same freaking thread every time he hears the name Comodo on these forums ::slight_smile:

ps: second number is RAM use, third is page file… and first one is CPU :smiley:

15

I have no problem with showing you CIS on my system.

16

can be deleted

17

You may have my deepest apologies opppppps

18

hopefully yes.

19

I have changed my original post. (As you can see.) :-[

20

OK nice :wink: (deleted mine above)