I have a fast laptop (Pentium 4 2.66gHz, 512 ram) running XP Home which has slowed down markedly since I installed Avast4 - especially right after boot up while the Avast icon is rotating and rotating.
Are there any tips for how to reduce this slowdown? It’s getting quite annoying, especially on booting up. All applications seem to take longer to start but the slowdown right after rebooting is particularly irritating.
Any suggestions appreciated.
the blue ball (you know) don’t “eat” a lot of memory: my laptop is older and less powerful than yours but I don’t see this slow run. Avast try to go online in search of updates immediately after the boot. Try to see if your VRDB generator is running: you can disable it or make it running only when the system is idle.
If you want to stop icon rotating, change the avast4.ini file. Click on ‘Settings’ in my signature and browse for the proper option.
If you want the scanner use less resources, reduce the protection level unchecking scanning of open/change/modified files of Standard Shield provider.
Try Startup Delayer.
It’s the only freeware I’ve found that controls the windows startup (Windows 98\Me\2k\XP) that does not follow a strict order.
You can set some applications to start very after the boot (logon) itself. 
If you want to stop icon rotating, change the avast4.ini file. Click on ‘Settings’ in my signature and browse for the proper option.
What do you mean by clicking on settings in your signature? I do not mind it rotating. I just assume that if it is rotating, it is also doing something else which is slowing things down.
If you want the scanner use less resources, reduce the protection level unchecking scanning of open/change/modified files of Standard Shield provider.
I’ll try that.
Avast try to go online in search of updates immediately after the boot. Try to see if your VRDB generator is running: you can disable it or make it running only when the system is idle.
I’ll try that too.
Thanks.
I have a slower laptop (1.8gHz and 256MB) and avast! doesn’t slow it down excessively. I have installed it on a laptop with 1.5gHz and 128MB and then boot up was painfully slow.
Boot up is slow on my computer anyway, and avast! checking all the system files at boot up does make it a bit slower, so I usually put the computer into hibernate rather than shutting down completely: it fires up again almost instantly.
Another suggestion to improve boot up speed is to disable or set to manual any services which you don’t need on your computer.
With the latest outbreak of viruses, automatic updates come through almost every day now. The blue ball spins and the computer is slow while these are coming through, but the blue update screen should alert you to the reason when it pops up.
Turns out the major slowdown was caused by Ewido searching for updates on bootup. I had installed Ewido at the same time I installed Avast4, hence the confusion.
How unsafe is this option?
Thanks for the help.
It’s not unsafe at all: services set to manual will be loaded if they are needed, not automatically. Services set to disable can be set to automatic or manual again if this causes any problems.
I think I have a magazine article somewhere which mentions services which can commonly be disabled. If I come across it again, I will past it. Otherwise a quick Google search for each started service will give you some information about it and will probably tell you if it needs to run automatically.