I’ve just run into a problem with Avast and Itunes. After a recent update to Avast I started having every track in Itunes freeze for a few seconds 13 seconds into playing. This happened regardless of what point in the song was played and whatever the length of the song. My CPU was spiking to 100% at this time and everything would grind to a halt for 4 secs or so.
I eventually realised that Avast was scanning at that time. At first it was scanning my Itunes library file (xml file). I set a rule to not scan that file but it still scanned a file described only as C:.…\Temp File. The only way to prevent this was to turn the Standard Shield sensitivity down to normal rather than high.
Itunes is still causing a quick spike at 10 secs but it doesn’t cause any freezing or silence as Avast is not trying to scan anything. I’m not sure what Itunes does at the 10 second mark.
Everything is running ok for me now provided I leave the sensitivity setting at normal. I assume that this will be ok for virus protection? I thought you might like to know, however, as others might be experiencing similar issues without knowing why and it may be possible to alter Avast to prevent the problem. Others simply suggested that I switch to another antivirus program but I’m otherwise happy with Avast and would rather keep using it.
No. That won’t help. I originally thought it was a buffer problem. The activity in Itunes is related to some sort of buffering of upcoming tracks in the playlist (It won’t happen if replaying the same song unless you change the playlist so that different songs are playing after the current song or if you switch to another song and then switch back).
The buffer in Itunes is already set to large (the largest setting available) and the problem was present at this setting. Changing it to small doesn’t make the problem any worse. It doesn’t change it at all. I’m not sure if this setting is affecting the relevant buffer but it is the only control over a buffer that I know of in Itunes. It is certainly relevant to radio station listening, previewing Itunes store tracks and sharing music across a network but perhaps not the relevant activity.
As I said, I’ve got rid of the pauses by altering Avast’s scanning and sensitivity. Itunes is still spiking the CPU but it was Avast’s scanning of the files opened by Itunes at that point that was causing everything to grind to a halt briefly.
I think the “Normal” sensitivity of the Standard Shield should be OK (regarding security).
It would be interesting to find out what is being scanned, however - maybe iTunes are accessing some file in TEMP folder, so it would be necessary to exlude that one as well?
(I’d say the main thing to do would be running the iTunes decoder thread at high priority, if it’s not done that way, but that’s rather a suggestion for the developpers than for a user).
I’ve managed to isolate where that temp file is. Earlier Avast wasn’t giving me the full path even when I let the cursor hover over the “last scanned” area. Now it is and it appears that 10 seconds into each new track that is played Itunes creates a file called “Temp File” in the …My Documents\My Music\Itunes folder. This file is then immediately deleted (I think some rewriting of the xml file takes place at this time as well). I did manage to check it and in the case of my current Itunes set up the Temp File is an 8 meg file (my Itunes library files are 13 meg (itl file) and 15 meg (xml) file.
The rule that I had set that said not to scan any file in that folder (I tried both just specifying the folder and also ending it with .) did not seem to prevent the Temp File being scanned. Now that I have specified it by name it is preventing scanning.
That means I can reset sensitivity to high and still avoid any freezing due to scanning during this spike in processor activity.
iTunes apparently creates some kind of a temp file (quite frequently, and quite a big one). If Standard Shield is on High, the file is scanned every time (because all “created/modified” files are scanned).
If Standard Shield is on Normal, the file is ignored…
Well, “easier”… I don’t think so ;), “safer”… probably yes, even though I don’t think that keeping the Standard Shield sensitivity on Normal poses any significant security risk.
um, that’s exactly what i said that i ended up doing a few posts up once i’d worked out what the location and name of the temp file was. using a wildcard exclusion rule didn’t seem to work for some reason. i needed to specify the exact file name to prevent the scan.
just out of interest the problem flared up again and i had to reset the rule. i think i had moved my itunes folder or something so i had to specify a new temp file & location to avoid scanning.
The path string is verified as a text so, long file names are diferent from short, you must specify both.
C:\Progra~1\Applic~1*.tmp
C:\Program files\Applications*.tmp