What is avast doing that requires so much cpu?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
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I’m curious what avast is actually doing that requires it to hog resources for extended periods of time - usually at boot and then about 12 hours later. It’s so extreme it kills anything else I’m doing for about a half hour. I understand and want the virus definitions updated (preferably on the defined schedule which avast ignores) but that can’t require as much cpu resources as avast is using.
This is the free version on an older machine with XP so I don’t expect perfection, but this seems to have gotten worse over time which is why I ask.
So what is it doing?

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See if a repair of avast solves it.

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Control Panel > Add/Remove or Programs and Features >select avast! > Scroll down and select repair. Once the repair finishes, reboot your system.

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What you describe sounds abnormal, but… What processor do you have, at what speed and how many cores?

More folks than not may have modern multi-core machines and not feel the impact of Avast’s operation, but surely it does take some power to run it. I imagine there are machines without sufficient resources.

Any software developer has to balance the features they provide to people with newer systems against how efficiently their products run on older ones. Folks with newer systems are probably more apt to spend money on things. Many new products (example, those from Adobe) are starting to shun XP entirely.

-Noel

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Many new products (example, those from Adobe) are starting to shun XP entirely
That's not always the fault of the Company but the computer and the OS. Many things don't work very well on outdated Computers and OS.
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Sorry for late reply - I didn’t get any notification emails.
Pentium 4 2.8gHz 1gB ram.
That should be enough to handle updating a database.
Like many others I need to keep an XP machine around because just as some software is starting to “shun XP”, there are many legacy programs that don’t work on W7 or 8.
I’m aware of the general issues with XP but my question was really aimed at finding out specifically what avast is doing when the memory/cpu use spikes up.
I did a repair and it made no difference.
I ran the update again and now I can’t get rid of the opening splash screen that says “to continue your upgrade to avast 2014”. You know, the one with the dropbox spam checkbox at the bottom.
If it’s not going to work well on XP machines then avast should make it clear that XP is no longer supported and I can move on and find something that works as advertised.

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If it's not going to work well on XP machines then avast should make it clear that XP is no longer supported and I can move on and find something that works as advertised.
avast 2014.9.0.2021 is working fine on XP. XP is still supported for the next +/- 2.5 years by avast.