Webshield issue with Vista version of AVast Home

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi folks,

First let me thank you for allowing us poor (financially) fellows to be able to have a quality Virus Scanner (I’m using Avast Home Edition)… Since I’m on disability and my revenues are very low, this is MUCH appreciated!. (and all of my friends are now on Avast as well :slight_smile:

Ok to the bug… I have both XP PRO SP2 (32-bit) and Vista 32-bit (Ultimate) installed on my PC. On XP, I have all the providers activated and everything is great … WebShield does NOT slow down my connections at all, but…

On Vista 32-bit (ultimate), when the WebShield is active, everytime I connect to a webpage (on a new session), I have a 3 seconds delay.

For example, to test this, I go to http://www.google.ca/ and notice the ‘connecting to google.ca…’ status for about 3 seconds…

then I go to http://performance.toast.net/ to test the speed of the connection… in order to do this, select a 'Web Host, then F-16 Jets and click on Run Test…

the first test will take 4.8 seconds on my PC (with both Firefox2 or IE7)… then If I go back once, then redo the test without exiting the web browser, the new test will take 1.8 seconds (which is what it’s always doing on WinXP with or without WebShield active).

Since in Vista I realized it might be the WebShield, I tried to deactive one function at a time to see if any of them were causing the problem … and no… not even PAUSING webshield will fix this…

IN ORDER to get rid of the 3 seconds delay on every navigation links I try, I need to TERMINATE webshield… THEN I get my normal ultra fast internet without any delays 8)… when I try the above test with webshield OFF, it’s always 1.8 seconds, never 4.8.

Since I want to keep using Avast webshield I thought I’d report this to you directly in the hope that it will help improve an already amazing product :).

Thanks again and continued success…

regards…

Rejean Gravel
Montreal, QC

2

WebShield shouldn’t be causing such a long delay… but, of course, protection takes resources…
Hope Lukas (our WebShield guru) post anything about…
There are other threads about Vista delays & WebShield.
Anyway, welcome to avast forums. Greetings from Brazil to the wonderful Canada 8)

3

thanks for the reply and the welcome :smiley:

Rej

4

Hello. I am back trying Avast again now that I have a new Vista Home Basic 32 System. I am also finding I take a terrible hit on internet webpage loading when the WebShield is activated. When I turn WebShield off my surfing is very fast and smooth. Turn it back on and the draggy delays begin again. I have tried this multiple times. WebShield is definitely the cause of the problem. I really want to continue using Avast, but I can’t stand the hit in page loading it is causing. Please help if you can. Thank you.

PS… I get 2692 Kbps with WebShield On versus 4205 Kbps with WebShield Off on DSL Reports Speed Test(NJ Server). Test 2 (NJ). 2718 versus 4583 Test 3(Miami Server). 3986 versus 4902 Test 4(Miami). 3957 versus 4896. All slower speeds are with WebShield ON. So the WebSheild is causing a significant hit in performance.

Vista Home Basic, Intel 945GCCR MB, Celeron D 3.46ghz, 1gb (2x512mb) DDR2 533 RAM, BFG 7950GT 256mb Graphics Card, Seagate 120gb SATA2 HDD, RoadRunner 5000 Kbps Internet, Avast Home 4.7, ZoneAlarm Home 7.1.078.000, CA Anti-Spyware and Anti-Spam.

5

Or any other program that is interfering with WebShield… like ZoneAlarm from time to time…
Activate logging in WebShield:

  1. Edit \data\avast4.ini file
  2. Find the section [WebScanner]
  3. Add the line:
    EnableLogging=1
  4. Restart Web Shield in XP (terminate and start again) or whole PC in case of Win98
  5. Browse (trying to access some webpages)

The log file are \data\log\ashwebsv.log and ashwebsv.ws.
They would be accessible when WebShield is terminated again.
Post them here or send by mail to rypacek (at) asw.cz
After that, disable the logging to avoid a big log file.

6

Hello again Tech! : ) Perhaps it would have been more accurate of me to say “I only experience the laggy page loading and internet slowdowns when the WebShield is activated”. Perhaps something else is interfering with Avast. At any rate,when I turn off WebShield the problem clears up. I will email you the requested info. Thank you…

7

It’s not my email but an Alwil team member (Lukas).

8

Please try the following:

open the file \data\avast4.ini, and add the following line to the [WebScanner] section:

ModifyVistaSocketAutoTuning=0

Save the changes, restart the computer and see if it makes any difference.

Thanks
Vlk

9

Thank you very much for your kind and speedy attempts to help :). Unfortunately the change to the .ini file did not help at all. If anything, it is more laggy now than before. And it speeds up considerably when I turn off the WebShield. Since I run ZoneAlarm would I need to change anything from the initial install settings for Avast?

10

Smoke,

can you please try the following:

  1. run CMD prompt (as an adminstrator)

  2. type:
    netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

  3. terminate and re-start WebShield

Do you see any difference?
Lukas.

Edit by Vlk - fixed a typo in the netsh command parameters.

11

Lukor, I tried it, and there is no improvement. :cry: The worst pages seem to be ones with lots of adds on them like Zap2it Tv Listings, but I am still taking about a 1000-1200 Kbps loss in internet speed when I test on DSL Reports while the WebShield is active. Again, thank you guys for your attempts to help and especially so quickly. It is inspirational. :slight_smile:

12

Should I reset the global autotuning parameter? and if so, to what? I tried typing the same string and changing “disabled” to “enabled” and “enable”, but the command prompt didn’t accept either command.

Never mind. I figured it out.

13

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Thanks anyway for the testing. Currently I don’t know what might be causing your problems, still searching for more ideas. :-\

14

I seems to me that the problem is during the connecion handshake. Pages with lots of adds have links to lots of different servers and hence more connections need to be created – hence the slowdown. Concerning the slowdown, well I have already seen many speed tests, some of them pretty dumb, some of them testing the speed by moving the payload into the HTTP headers (very strange), some use many connections at once. Don’t know what is the logic behind this one? Can you post the exact link for the test page?

15

Thanks Lukor. I had already found the reset for the global autotuninglevel by Google. Should I reset the previous change Vlk had me make to the Avast WebShield INI (ModifyVistaSocketAutoTuning=0), and if so, what setting should I specify? 1 ? Or delete that line from the INI altogether?

The SpeedTest site is DSL Reports. I have used it for years. It is Java based, and it usually seems to be a good indicator of my actual speed. For instance, when I “feel” the connection is slow and go check with DSL Reports it usually verifies that my speed is off. When the Net “feels” fast and I check, it almost always verifies that my speeds are good. At any rate here is the link.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?java=1

I think you are right about the number of connections on heavily advertised sites being a part of the problem. I turned on the “Show detailed info on performed action” setting in the Advanced Options for WebShield, and when I visited the Zap2it website, the WebShield was going crazy with many multiple connection attempts from the Adservers.

http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/tvlistings/ZCGrid.do This website provides an extreme example of the slowdown problem. But this site still loads many times faster with the WebShield turned off. On other sites the problem is similar, but not as severe.

Finally, and as always, please understand I am grateful to your company for providing this fine product and service to so many people. If there was a “clapping hands” icon available I would be using it here. :slight_smile:

16

Hey all,

Sorry for the (long) delay,

I’ll try the log and changes mentionned and report + email the infos back.

Rej

17

Ok,

done all the testing, logs and haven’t seen any significant changes to my browsing… still getting the approx 3 secs delays on each simple pages I try and I have the same results as I used to when I wrote the original messsage.

I’m now using version 1029 btw.

Lukor’s
I seems to me that the problem is during the connecion handshake.

I agree, since my downloads (once started and using Webshield in Vista) go as fast as they usually do under XP or if I don’t use WebShield.
There also seem to be something about returning to a page within the same session. Let’s say I link to Gamespot from Google, if I to google.com, I won’t get the delay. Not knowing how IE or FF works, I can’t comment on if it’s already in memory etc but I thought I’d mention it in case it may help.

BTW, are we the only ones experiencing this issue? or is this an issue for all users of Vista + Avast Home Ed.?

I checked the log and couldn’t see anything relating to timers so I’m not sure if the Email sent will be of help. :confused:

Anyways, everyone’s help is much appreciated and if any of you need more testing, I’ll be more than happy to contribute.

Thanks again and good luck.

Rej

Btw, how do I add my Computer info into the footer of each messages? Check teh profile settings and couldn’t find it.

18

nevermind about the footer :slight_smile: figured it would be the signature and I just saw that it was :wink:

Rej

19

Hello Rej,

I am still unable to reproduce it here or find any possible cause. Can you please make one more test.

Edit avast4.ini file, in the section [WebScanner] find the line LoadIsapiFilters=1 and change the value to 0.

[WebScanner]
LoadIsapiFilters=0

A terminate/re-start WebShield.

Does anything change?

(if not, please re-enable the filter, it does the virus scanning and is rather important :stuck_out_tongue: )

20

Hi lukor,

first, thanks for replying and for your continued interest in trying to resolve this. Much appreciated :slight_smile:

Tried the LoadIsapiFilters=0 without success.

I figured I’d even try the autoredirect=0 flag to see and didn’t notice much (if any) difference either.

Wish I had better news :-\

I wonder, is there is a flag that would allow us to LOG webscanner with a time stamp for each lines? This would give you a better idea of the delays I’m referring to.

Also, I’d like to mention this again, the delays do seem to be almost exactly 3 seconds (3000 ms)… Is there something in the web communication protocols that has a timeout of 3000ms out there? This might help.

Again, the above is an approximation but since I moved and changed my service to 10mb (from 7mb), my results are now 4.4 seconds then down to 1.4 seconds when I retry it right away (or when I’m using either WindowsXP with WebShield or Vista without WebShield). This is consistant… if I exit the web browser (IE7 or FF… tried both) I always get first 4.4 seconds then 1.4 seconds on the test page I mentionned in my first post while on Vista with Webshield.

I realise this isn’t a perfect test, but if you know of a webpage that would help you even further, please feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to test those pages as well :slight_smile:

Until then, good luck and don’t forget to shoot me any tests you’d like me to try. (and a flag for time stamps for the logs if one exists) :wink:

Regards…

Rej