I am suspecting that you not only have an older system with limited CPU and memory but, looking at your logs, I think you have a big problem with disk access timing on this system.
This could be partly attributable to having a heavily fragmented disk. Do you run a regular degramentation?
Look at you log3.txt
Since the avast update is a differential update rather than a full update avast has to work out the differences that need to be installed.
Take a look at 2:36:48 then the next log entry is 2:43:58 a gap of over 7 minutes! That is just a small part of the update.
I just brought up my 8 year old XP system (1GHz processor and 512Mb memory) and avast updated it from 080717-0 to 080722-1. The equivalent gap in the log on that system to your >7 minutes is 36 seconds. On my old XP system the download time for the files was only 8 seconds for the 320Kb of update files. I have a connection of the same speed as yours (6Mbps) and the total update time was 1 minute 51 seconds.
The drive was actually defragged last week, before I installed Avast this time around.
When the 5 hour point hit for the VRDB generation and it had not finished, that was enough for me. I am not one that will leave a system on all evening.
It simply takes too long for anything Avast-related to get done and I’m going to look at other options.
Thank you again for all the help, but I am now convinced that I can’t use Avast.
Well for a start the VRDB is something that isn’t found in other AVs and one that will most likely be dropped at some point in the future as when it was introduced it was a much more useful function but things progress and it isn’t as much of a benefit as it was. So you could simply disable it.
You will find that working with avast and your system to get the best compromise between protection and performance would be better for you.
With your old system you are going to experience similar issues with other AVs and if you don’t it is likely because they don’t provide the same levels of protection. avast by comparison to other major AVs is relatively light on resources. It is your system and your choice, if that is what you wild do, good luck with your next AV.
Don’t forget help and support is a major consideration/issue when you are experiencing any problem.
Uninstall all known instances of AV software past and present (Avast, McAfee), including running their secondary uninstallers, rebooted in-between all of them.
Ran Disk Defrag. As I ran this last week, it indicated that only 8% was fragmented and it did not require another defrag. I defragged it anyway.
Then reinstalled Avast. The (i) VRDB icon is not currently displayed in the systray. In looking at Tech’s message in http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=36528.msg309054#msg309054, the MergeIcons, Disabled and ShowtaskbarIcon entries are not currently listed under [VRDB] in the avast4.ini file.
I have attached the log from the point of installation to the present time.
I installed Avast on my father’s computer earlier this year. That PC has an AMD Athlon CPU, 600 Mhz and 256 Mb of RAM installed. The Athlon is in the 686-class (i686) of CPU, my AMD K6-2 is in the 586-class (i586).
I am guessing that because the Athlon is an i686, I have noticed the same applications run faster, despite only having 1/2 the memory installed, than the same applications on my K6-2 system with twice the memory. In the Task Manager, both are showing the exact same processes running at startup (except for the nVIDIA and HP processes which are on my K6-2 system).
When Avast just updated at bootup of the Athlon system:
Information about current update:
Total time: 3:59
There was one other item that I turned off at startup that also had an icon in the systray. With that no longer loading in, I’ll report back on how fast the next Avast! update takes.
Well, when I uninstalled and reinstalled, in order to get the (i) icon back, the first update took 15:04.
What I did this time was watch the router to see when the data was being exchanged and what the hard drive did.
It appears that after the update files are downloaded and received, the software is updating the files almost immediately, which is what I believe should be happening. Then we have that gap of several minutes when the hard drive shows no activity. Then, the hard drive shows activity and the audio with visual indication of the update, appears afterwards. This gap of several minutes, eludes me, since there is nothing in the log to indicate that anything is happening aside from updating the software with the new file, but there was no hard drive activity…
Anyhow, it is working, so I’m leaving it as it is.
epp, even though it’s strange…
Can you test your Internet speed? Donwload/Upload.
Is there any other application (security or not) that is filtering the http traffic?
The only application that seems to be filtering http traffic is Avast’s Web Shield itself.
Using the Flash speed test at Speakeasy using their New
York site (closest to me):
With Avast Web Shield paused:
Download: 6,390 kbps
Upload: 2,711 kbps
It’s worth noting that other AV products I’ve used in the past that did not have anything like Web Shield, produced similar speed test results as above.
With Avast Web Shield enabled, testing from the same site:
Well that is strange as paused still uses the web shield proxy, it is just the scanning that stops. So the limitation isn’t entirely the web shield but the low system spec (AMD K6-2 (with 3-D Now!) 500 MHz CPU - 524 Mb RAM) as the web shield scans the content.
XP whilst nowhere as bad as Vista will gobble some of your RAM and CPU just to run and anything else running in the background will also eat some more, so that will also limit the available resources foe avast to scan the content, whist a download (like the speed test) is going on. That is effectively what is throttling your download speed.
I doubt you would notice it as much during normal browsing though ?
The auto update uses a CPU reduction trick so it doesn’t take more than 30% of the CPU time, that would slow the update processing. I can’t recall if this trick works in win9x, but there seems to be something like that happening, you could check to see what resources are used for the different update.
The Manual update has no such restriction and will grab as much as is available and appear quicker, assuming the CPU restriction trick works in the above info.
I’ve changed the update settings to ask when available, then when the next update is available, I’ll have it update then and check the speed afterwards.
Any speed difference (with Web Shield fully enabled) with normal web browsing, is not noticable.
The maximum amount of memory that the motherboard (DFI K6BV3+/66, installed in 2000) will accept is 768 Mb (or 256 x 3), but the DIMM’s must have the chips on both sides, otherwise the BIOS only recognizes 1/2 the actual memory amount. What is in this now, are 1 256 Mb and 2 128 Mb DIMM’s. Assuming I can find the correct DIMM’s locally, would increasing the memory to 768 Mb, noticeably improve things?
Ask acts in the same way as Manual as you are effectively initiating a manual update after the notification.
Getting the right chips and increasing the memory should help, but you are always going to be hampered by the processor as the validation/verification of the downloaded files is cpu and ram intensive.
On this system, I have noticed that process use between 27 and 31% of CPU resources when it’s updating automatically (at startup). But so far, a manual update runs quicker, as you explained.
