Too many items starting up with AVAST Free

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I am running windows XP Pro with Avast Free.
the StartUp is taking a very long time.

I have checked in autoruns, and all these are in the startup:
avastui.exe
ashshell.dll from HKLM\Software\Classes*\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers
ashshell.dll from HKLM\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers
ashshell.dll from HKLM\Software\Classes\Folder\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers
ashshell.dll from HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers
avastemupdate.exe from Task Scheduler
avastsvc.exe from HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services

and all these from HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
aswhwid.sys
aswmonflt.sys
aswrdr.sys
aswrvrt.sys
aswsnx.sys
aswsp.sys
aswtdi.sys
aswvmm.sys

are all these necessary? I’m trying to figure out the problem. Online armor is also starting at the same time (they are each excluded from the other)
I believe the last one may have to do with VMware, which is no longer on my PC!

2

As far as I know all those processes are required, try the new beta and see if that helps speed things up a bit https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=151156.0

3

Those ashshell.dll items are not really starting - that’s a registration for context menu (i.e. the DLL is loaded once you open such a menu somewhere).
As for the rest - yes, I believe it’s needed. The number of drivers doesn’t really mean anything… we could probably merge them into a small number of bigger drivers, but that wouldn’t help anything, the amount of code would be the same, just harder to maintain (and it wouldn’t be modular, so you could skip the drivers on a machine where it’s not needed).