The problems/annoyances on my Avast Free installation:
Avast starts a scan or whatever it does without any user interaction and hogs the PC
Every setting change I make gets a reset every once in a while. Those settings are: sound off, exclusion list and privacy settings
Avast UI takes forever to open
The behavior shield made more problems than it potentially solved because of the extreme CPU/HDD/SSD usage and I had to uninstall it. Now I’m running only Web, Mail and File system shield and there’s no end in sight for the CPU hog. Where can we see and stop Avast scan if one is currently in progress? Why is Avast resetting user settings without any confirmation?
Tried repair, tried uninstall and cleaning with avastclear.exe many times before but I will do it again just for the sake of it.
Now the web shield is using 30-50% CPU with one Firefox tab open while I’m writing this.
Tracked it down to Avast starting scans on my IP cameras which (I guess) never stops. Started scanning cams since today or what? I turn off the camera software (iSpy) and Avast CPU usage is gone. This never happened before. iSpy usually uses 4-5% CPU on my configuration with 4 cameras. Adding camera IP’s to Avast exlusion list does nothing - added to File paths and URLs under global exclusions.
I remember the times of early Avast versions - lightweight, quick, terrible UI and zero problems. Everything is a complete opposite today.
After repairing again the CPU usage is gone and everything seems normal so far. I don’t know if the exclusion list reset is included in repair but it is empty now.
A new program update has just be released, see https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=199715.0, read that as it is likely to have resolved some of the issues. There are off-line download links if you want to do a clean install or do a manual program update from the avast UI.