Hi, Wilders remains a really great forum, even if I am an irregular. First time looking at the new format, very nice. My XP SP3 system is mainly Avast and Private Firewall protection (usually I use Online Armor on firewall on other systems). Generally I have liked Avast the last few years. The v2015 started to use lots of CPU .. 25% .. 90% here and there, interfering with the system. There is a certain amount of discussion in the Avast forum, some involving "NG". It is all a bit arcane . However I think the discussion here might be more helpful (including as to whether to do an uninstall and an alternate program.) The question is .. can I make Avast friendly again? If not .. should I revert to 2014 or another program? I really don't like to uninstall security software, unless really needed. The Settings section seems key, and other than the color scheme, is actually understandable. ========================= Settings --> Active Protection The high-CPU is probably some element of real-time scanning. File System Shield Mail Shield Web Shield And I will turn off mail shield, not an issue for me. The other two I am reluctant to turn off without some input. Web Shield It seems like some sort of web shield is appropriate these days, and even though Avast! might give some false positives, or alarms on minor issues, it does seem to do a good job. If this is a big part of slowdown (not likely) I would use an alternative. File System Shield sounds like a basic HIPS function, and since I don't have a dedicated HIPS tool, helpful. In fact, that and memory protection is mostly why I have the program, as I understand. So I can't do very much to help here, other than turn off the mail scanning. ============================ Settings --> General - Smart Scan ** Apparently, this will not affect my normal CPU usage, only during scan ** The defaults look good here, I turned off "scan for outdated software". The virus & malware section has more refinement. Recognize File Types by their: Content (thorough, but slow) OR Name Extension (fast) Under name extensions you can put stuff in. (enter extension) Not sure whether that is something I should do. Apparently a "Smart Scan" will not bother with .txt, pictures, and some other types. Thus, all this will only affect an on-demand or scheduled smart scan. There is a lot more in this General - Scan Settings area. Mainly I check the report file on. However, it should allow the date or date/time of the scan to be part of the name. Also you should be able to browse for placement of the file (that might be elsewhere). ============================ Settings --> General - Alerts A nice feature ========================= Settings --> General Defaults look good. I am surprised they leave the Scan for PUPs off as default. And .. I checked on .. automatically open the scan results. == Settings --> General --> Popups Some changes, e.g. change the Warning and Alert popups to more seconds (e.g from 20 to 300) Settings --> General --> Exclusions Apparently some programs place their .exe there, or got in by my override earlier. Vueminder, Live365, Swifttodolist, dopus and 2 kernel.exe Under file paths, I am going to place my huge Eudora email. I would prefer to simply have exclusions by file types (.mbx .txt etc). Apparently they accomplish this by smart scan, but without making it clear what is excluded. e.g. Is mbx in or out? Anyway, the path exclusion is acceptable and crisp. ============================ Enable Rootkit Scan on system startup - on - sounds reasonable Also raw disk access - with some trepidation. ============================ Setting --> Tools Yah! It looks like in tools you can simply shut off: Software Updater GrimeFighter Browser Cleanup SecureLine VPN Access Anywhere Remote Assistance SecureLine VPN Rescue Disk Teamviewer and WinPatrol and various other products take care of those needs. SecureLine VPN sounds like it would be nice on laptop. Home Security Network sounds like a reasonable new addition. ======================== Overall, I noticed the exclusions are relatively friendly (apparently the files are by folder, they should also allow extension exclusion, apparently they do that themselves in smart scan, shouldn't we be able to tweak this?) Your thoughts? For now, to write this post, and research the settings, I turned it all off! The high CPU is a deal-buster, unless it can be fixed. My own check of the settings did not come up with much I could do. However, it was fun, and overall I would say, well-designed. Steven Avery Bayside, NY
If you do not use an Email Client, I would only have File Shield and Mail Shield. Get rid of NG. I may be wrong but I believe it only can run if Hardware Virtualization is available in BIOS. You can do a custom install or a repair install and remove any components you do not use. Software Updater GrimeFighter Browser Cleanup SecureLine VPN Access Anywhere Remote Assistance SecureLine VPN Rescue Disk I would get rid of any of the above that you do not use. Be very careful with Grimefighter. That has caused a lot of issues. You can verify that on the Grimefighter avast forum. If you still have high CPU usage, revert back to the last version of avast.
It still has been annoying, even with a lot turned off. Right now I am trying to see if File Shield as the only shield is better. The problem may be a glitch in web shield, since I tend to have a bunch of Firefox tabs (20-40) open (mostly low activity text windows, occasionally a bluegrass gospel song.). I really don't want to uninstall Avast unless it is very necessary. I tend to like the program overall. (I used Avira for a few years, and jumped ship that year they dabbled with Uniblue, and never said .. we was wrong .. technically speaking both have been generally fine.)
Too much for the money. Avast has become too bloated, and you wind up shutting features off. I jumped ship and got Emsisoft. It is an anti virus/malware app. Not free though.
I see the https scanning was on Ghacks Avast’s HTTPS Scanning interferes with Firefox and other programs http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/31/avasts-https-scanning-interferes-with-firefox-and-other-programs/ Leading to: http://www.avast.com/no-no/faq.php?article=AVKB89 Avast Web Shield now features HTTPS-encrypted scanning. Now, we are able to detect and decrypt TLS/SSL protected traffic in our Web-content filtering component. We are using our own generated certificates that are added into the Root Certificate store in Windows and also into major browsers. This feature will protect you against viruses coming through HTTPs traffic as well as adding compatibility for SPDY+HTTPS/ HTTP 2.0 traffic. You can tune/disable this feature in the settings section. In my web shield settings there is nothing about HTTPS scanning. The Eset idea is getting my attention. However I don't mind all that stuff shut off, if it will just stay in the corner quietly. Steven
I've successfully reverted to AIS '2014.9.0.2010' (because it's the latest AIS 2014 full installer I have) on 3 XP PCs with AMD 'Athlon XP' processors, using 'NirSoft RunAsDate' to stop it downloading the latest installer. https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=161805.0 Smooth as... so far!
Reluctantly, it looks like I am going to uninstall. I keep thinking there may be some other cause, or something I could do, but I don't like glancing over at the CPU at a time when not much is happening and seeing 25 to 50 to 75 and feeling sluggish. It is one thing when I have a lot of Firefox windows open, but not when there is a handful (even, I think, with web shield off, but I just got tired of the whole thing). I have an 111 megabyte file from March, 2013. Hmmm... I may abandon ship. Like you , I also missed some of the update sounds (VPS?). I liked the web shield in 2014 because it similarly gave a nice sound notification on a problematic web-site and told me what it did. So I want a replacement that is strong on that element as well. (btw, I am also thinking of removing Private Firewall as well. That is for another forum section. In fact, I may switch to a Windows 7 puter as my main one, reluctantly.) ** The uninstall went ok.. long, probably reasonably thorough, using Revo for a bit more. Only the question as to why I uninstalled on a separate web page. That had a glitch, a validation error, and would take my answer. Ok, now what do I do. System is nice and light. ==================================== Main System- Intel Pentium 4 630, Nividia Quadro NVS 285, 4 GB RAM XP Pro SP3, WinPatrol and Chameleon, Private Firewall,(Avast 2015 likely removed, considering replacement.) Other systems-Windows 7, Online Armor Steven
#1 thing I turn off if slowness is http module's I find them having little merit and often problematic, with that said I still have http scanning enabled on my laptop install of avira, but not https. If I run a speedtest.net speedtest avastsvc maxes my cpu .
