I have been using Avast Free which I like so far. Alert popup warned that Avast Free will expire in 30 days so attempted to purchase the product, with 2 year ‘Extra Savings’ offer.

Secure Page with non-secure items opens. I entered credit card info. There’s no hot buttons there for Avast Internet Security to ‘Add to Cart’. There’s a quantity button set at ‘1’, which is correct: one 2 year subscription. No simple hot button to ‘Add to Cart’ for the Antivirus Security System, none for Robo-Form Password Manager, and none for Avast Rescue Disc to add to cart. Any other purchase page I’ve ever seen has buttons to choose, ‘Buy Now’ or whatever, not Avast!.

Clicking on any of those items I’m redirected to a page that says my Shopping Cart is empty, no way to add to cart. Yes, cookies were enabled. There’s a place to choose Payment Options like Money Order, Wire Transfer or PayPal. There’s almost zero information offered on the purchase page for what the offered components actually are, plus I couldn’t purchase from the screwball odering site.

I was unable to purchase, so I renewed the Avast Free. Now the Avast Free is very slow since updates of 8-31-11. No other changes to computer. Tried the ‘Repair’ option in Windows Add/Remove Programs’, no change. I’ve scanned for spyware, deleted all temporary files, deleted internet history files, cleaned out Recycle bin and all the other stuff that can slow the machine down – still no good.

Unfortunately a screen shot of the Upgrade purchase page doesn’t display properly here:

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This problem mentioned is on a Dell computer, 2.8 Pentium with Windows XP-Pro, Outpost Firewall on dialup. No prior problems.

When opening Internet Explorer home page it’s extremely slow, up to 5 minutes. Then every following page transition is brutally slow. Also just as slow when opening IE from a link.

Viruse definitions are 110901-1, version is 6.0.1203. Tried a manual update but got message ‘Already up to date’.

At first my internet connection icon, ISP tray icon, lights up as usual, and Avast icon spins, as usual. Then Avast stops spinning, ISP connection icon goes dark and nothing happening. ISP icon will flicker on, off, on from time to time, but Avast icon remains motionless, not responding to that traffic internet.

After 2-5 minutes, ISP icon lights up, Avast icon begins spinning normally and page finally completes loading. Some sites will not load at all, seems to stall out or time out, and tray says ‘Done’ even though it hasn’t loaded.

I believe the problem started yesterday morning after the Avast update of definitions, but subsequent updates and Avast ‘Repair’ update did not help. According to Avast control panel, all is well. It isn’t! There’s considerable traffic over connection while Avast activity icon isn’t spinning to show it’s effectively monitoring that traffic.

Try installing this one staight over the top Spectacle http://files.avast.com/files/beta/6.0.1279/setup_ais.exe fixes alot of xp problems, if it still hasn’t worked then i suggest a clean install with the same link i supplied.
Since you have downloaded AIS you need to do a custom install and uncheck the firewall or get rid of outpost firewall.

Thanks, Craig!

“Since you have downloaded AIS you need to do a custom install and uncheck the firewall or get rid of outpost firewall.”

I didn’t download AIS, the website still wouldn’t let me after 3 attempts. I currently have the Free version. Should I still try to install from that link you gave?

Thanks, tried the install link. On dialup it says it’s over 4 hours of download, something like 78mgs! Is this a patch or a whole new copy or version or what? I don’t know much about computer stuff…

It’s a whole new version, the new beta would definatly be a bonus on your system.
If you only want the free http://files.avast.com/files/beta/6.0.1279/setup_av_free.exe

Thanks, Craig!

I have opportunity to leave the machine to download that Beta today while I attend to other business, so I’ll give it a shot. Hopefully it will straighten out some wrinkles.

Interesting that two forum websites seem to function pretty much normally, this one and another, but all others are a mess. I noticed that 1/2 a dozen [maybe all] of those others were offline for some ‘upgrades’ at the same time the problems suddenly appeared, so possibly their OS’s became less compatible with their ‘upgrades’.

Thanks again for your help, I appreciate it!!
Spectacle

Your welcome, let us know how it turns out after the install.

@Spectacle, JFYI,

Sometimes, a “bad download” can make you waste time. For example, downloading Avast’s setup.exe and running it, for you it may seem that everything is fine, but the installation might fail.

Normally, the setup.exe will refuse to run at all if it is not correctly downloaded, but there is a little chance that it still may seem as ok, while in fact it isn’t.

Downloading with a dial up tends to be more “problematic” when it is in a dozens MB size magnitude (or more).

So, using a download manager and inserting the correct checksum helps to successfully download the correct file, and also to be sure it was not tampered with.

Filehippo.com includes MD5 checksums. Although the beta releases are not part of their downloads, they do have all the final stable free releases of Avast (with the respective MD5).

You may want to keep this in mind for future downloads.

(BTW, I still don’t know why Avast don’t use checksums in the original official downloads, including the betas. Or maybe I missed them?)

Very good, got home from town & download had completed, no apparent errors, for a change hah! Just love it when I leave the machine downloading a large file and come home to find out it glitched at .72 seconds after I closed the door leaving…

Thanks for the extra info, ady4um, I will surely keep that in mind. Of course if this doesn’t setup properly I’ll go back & download with MD5 checksums, knew nothing about that.

Thanks all, hoping this does the trick!

Okay, been on the net since last post: all is well! No more problems that I can see, all back to normal.

Impressed with how blazing fast the download installed, going over the top of existing installation. Total time once installer opened, maybe 20 seconds!

So, a whole bunch of thanks to all who helped. It worked great!

You welcome :slight_smile:

@Spectacle,

Just to avoid future problems, be sure you reboot after you finished your Avast installation. Usually, it is a “must”; always recommended.

About download managers, specially for dial up connections, " FreeDownloadManager.org " (not “.com”) is free, has the checksums options, and you can configure it to scan any download with Avast too. There are other tools available; this is just one example. Download managers can usually help you with those “.72 seconds” situations you mentioned, and you can even schedule your downloads for the hours when you pay less for your dial up (or when there is less network traffic).

Yes! A very big deal that rebooting!! I’ve actually found, and on the advice of others far more knowledgeable than myself, that it’s best to reboot twice instead of once, after a major change. Have had it happen that the first reboot does reflect changes, but the second reboot sort of locks it in.

Thanks for the tip on Download Manager. I’ve used filehippo & other download sites in the past with their download managers, to good effect. Only 2 places I refuse to do so: antivirus and firewall downloads. Being a suspicious guy by nature, I don’t want to trust anybody except original maker of those items, lest the code be ‘messed with’ somehow.

Thanks again to all for your help, very happy with the results here!