Not sure this is related to Avast (in fact, I doubt it is related to it) but thought I’d check in with the knowledgeable folks here to see what you think. I’ve been running Avast Professional on this new system for almost 3 weeks with no problems until this weekend.
In any event, my startup/reboot time has suddenly increased a bunch. How can I determine what is causing my slower bootup? Is there some program I can run that tells me what is happening at startup and taking so long to load up? And, how do I fix it?
Background and Symptoms: Running Vista 64bit (home premium) for about 3 months on a new system (HP Core 2 Quad processor Q6700 2.66 ghz and 8 gb of RAM). Startups/reboots have always been pretty quick. For instance, less than 60 seconds from hitting restart until welcome screen is up after reboot and this was same after installing Avast about 3 weeks ago. This weekend, I noticed that my reboot has slowed to a crawl and now takes about 2 mintues or slightly longer (about twice as long as it used to). It also acts a bit different. The additional one minute lag seems to be after the Windows thing comes up with the little graphic of a moving line at the bottom of screen zipping along, then screen flickers and it use to have the Vista logo flash up pretty quickly and go to welcome screen. Now, after the screen flickers, it stays black and eventually the mouse cursor shows up (as an arrow) in the middle of the screen and stays for about 1 minute (mouse cursor never showed up before at this point) and then I get the Vista logo graphic and it goes to the welcome screen. I tried changing Avast to delay its startup until after other programs loaded but that had no effect. I have tried doing a restore to a point a few days ago and it did not help. I guess I can go back further in time and restore to see if that helps. Does Restore change the startup programs and timings back to what it was say a week or two ago, and does it change the registry back to what it was a week or two ago? Aside from installing Avast, the only other programs I have installed in last couple weeks are Spyware Terminator (uninstalled that as the scheduler does not seem to run under 64bit), iTunes 8, and Amazon MP3 Downloader. Any idea why the sudden change in the amount of time to start up? Is there something I can use to diagnose this?
I found that the avast5.ini file had ballooned in size to 308 KB. I fixed the problem by deleting avast5.ini and then running the avast repair to set up a new avast5.ini file.
First turn off the avast self defense, in avastUI go to settings/troubleshooting and uncheck self defense, confirm action.
Find and delete avast5.ini at: Documents and settings\all users\application data\alwil software\avast5\avast5.ini
Go to control panel - add/remove programs.
Select avast antivirus, click change/remove, select repair (bottom icon), next
This should create a new avast5.ini file.
Reboot and see if the startup delay is fixed.
I too have the same issue on XP machine. un-installed and installed the free version and it works fine. Something is wrong with the Pro version but I have yet to see a reply about resolving it. I have removed it a couple of times and used Perfect Uninstaller to remove all traces. Each time Pro kills the boot time , icons not appearing, other applications not loading in taskbar, etc for several minutes. Free version does not seem to have this issue at all. The start services later options have no effect either. As for now I am running the free version even though I have a paid subscription to Pro :(. Cannot deal with the slow boot when I need to fire up laptop to do something and it takes 5-8 min or more to boot.