Avast

[floppybootstomp]

I have an old laptop here at least 10 years old, my daughter used it for a while but it was incredibly slow so I bought her a nice new Netbook a year ago which worked well and this laptop languished in a cupboard for a year.

I needed to be able to use some audio editing software on site so thought this laptop would do the job. It’s a Toshiba, 1.3Ghz single core with 256Mb RAM. Installed Win XP, installed audio software, running fine, actually quite nippy, nothing like as sluggish as it was previously.

Installed Belkin wireless WiFi card software and card, linked to my wireless router, all good, online, still working quite fast.

And then I installed Avast. I chose the default install, not custom install – mistake!

It took forever to install and gave me, unasked for, Google Chrome browser and a Google toolbar within Internet Explorer. It also made Chrome the default browser. And it slowed the whole machine down to a crawl, it was now just as sluggish as it used to be when my daughter used it.

Apps that install software uninvited make me exceedingly angry so I then went to uninstall toolbar and Google Chrome. This took forever and several forced reboots but eventually I got shot of them and also deleted relevant folders and registry entries.

But things were still running slow and I observed that little Avast spinning orange ball in the task bar.

So I uninstalled Avast, relevant folders and registry entries and rebooted.

My my my, we’re up to speed again.

This leads me to believe that Avast is a complete piece of crap and resource hog, the hell with them. As I’ll not use this laptop or be online with it very often I’m going without AV software and have installed Malwarebytes and will give a scan with that occasionally.

And if I do get a virus or summat, no prob, just format C: and start again, not a prob, this machine has few tasks to perform for me.

Avast can go boil their bum.

As for Google, I use their search engine, it's the best imo, I've tried a lot of the others for a comparison. But I don't like or want much else of what they do, I've read bad things about Chrome, particularly the preponderance of advertising - go away!

This whole episode has left a sour taste in the mouth and is a little disappointing.

Such is life, as Ned Kelly remarked just before they hung him.

 

[nivrip]

Well, obviously, you're better off without Avast but I have to say that I've used it and had no problems whatsoever.

But I do agree, you must use the Custom Install to prevent Google Chrome and taskbar appearing, unasked for. Very naughty of them imo.

 

[floppybootstomp]

On a newer machine with better specs it's not obvious how much resources Avast is actually using, newer machines can cope better than an older machine, obviously, but any program that is that intense and is using so much of a machine's available resources is not for me, quite an eye opener.

I've also used Avast in the past without probs. Well, apart from that annoying voice message (although I believe the voice message can be disabled).

 

[Abarbarian]

Clone your partition now with Clonezilla and if you need a reinstall it will be easy peasy.
Maybe Avast was doing an initial scan which caused the slowdown.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Avast did initially scan but the machine stayed sluggish even after the scan had finished.

Looking at this subjectively, the latest version of Avast has been designed to run in 2012 with machines that probably have a minimum of 1 or 2Gb of memory. My machine is ten years old and has just 256Mb of memory so perhaps some perspective is in order here.

Nevertheless I was surprised at how it more or less crippled the OS.

I may do a backup, probably not worth it though as I've now finished the installation I loaded the laptop for, it's next outing will be the next time I have to install an amplifier that needs programming, which may be never, either because I just don't get the orders or I'm seriously thinking of retiring.

 

[crazylegs]

Mr Flopp's

I installed a new copy of Avast on a clients machine yesterday and I ran the default install, I did however remove the 2 ticks form the install chrome browser box and install other junk box underneath where it said default install

It then proceeded to install just avast and now't else!

Ran smoothly too on a 2.0ghz dual core notebook, so as per your earlier comments I think the specs of the lappy you installed to would have definitely had a big effect on how that Virus software would have ran..
Just thought I would comment here as many people I know prefer the voice prompts on the definition updates..