We have a new update on The Future of the Penny Arcade Forums.
AvastSVC.exe and System Interrupts sucking down CPU cycles
RoyceSraphim
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I just upgraded to windows 7 on a fresh new ssd. All was good for a while (barring long downloads), but now I'm getting massive spikes in CPU usage from Avast.
Snipped from resource monitor, those last two columns are the current percentage of cpu usage and average percentage of cpu usage.
Please help.
I thank you in advance.
Snipped from resource monitor, those last two columns are the current percentage of cpu usage and average percentage of cpu usage.
Please help.
I thank you in advance.
0
Posts
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
Get Malwarebytes, and have it run on a schedule. Not all the time in the background, like most anti-virus programs, which steal your CPU cycles, but on a schedule, like everyday at 4am, when you should be asleep.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/
There is no way I will ever believe that is as affective as running a real time scanning antimalware program.
Not sure where the avast hate is coming from, but I've run a few different programs over the years and I've found avast to be one of the better ones in terms of unobtrusiveness and not hogging resources. I posted this in the build thread but you might try playing with the detection level settings and/or adding exemptions to game .exe's to prevent avast from trying to keep track of everything a game is doing in real time.
edit - as for microsoft security essentials, it is definitely not as good as it used to be. This is just the first link I came across, but this site appears to do antimalware comparisons and they found MSE to have a detection rate in the mid 70% range, while avast has detection rates in the mid 90% range. According to their stats the industry average is in the mid 90% range, so MSE is really lagging behind.
That's why I haven't jumped on to Hsu's advice because much of the data about these programs and suites are subjective until they fail to detect a virus or get they get upgraded to a point better than they were before.
For as long as I've given a shit about active antivirus (basically since I first got an internet connection), Avast has been regarded as complete garbage by anyone I've spoken to on the subject. You are in fact the FIRST person I've ever heard say anything nice about it. I've tried Avast, AVG, Norton, Kapersky, McAfee, Trend Micro, and ESET.
The only one I had any real success with in terms of actually keeping shit off my computer without slowing it to a crawl/otherwise being almost as bad as malware itself was ESET, but that costs money and Windows Defender is free. I also use Malware Bytes for an extra layer of anti-*ware protection, and I haven't had a single problem since my LAST p.c. That's four+ years of no viruses uncaught and instantly disposed of. I believe keeping my Chrome updated has a fair bit to do with that as well.
My mom and a few friends' wives just blindly download and I'm stuck triaging their systems regularly.
1. Through an open port on your computer. You fix this by getting a good router, and changing the router's admin password. A good router will block all unexpected incoming traffic.
2. Through your wifi connection. Anything wireless will always be vulnerable, no matter what type of security you use. You fix this by running a wired connection to your router
3. Through your email. However, the popular email services from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, they all scan for viruses these days, so you normally don't have to worry about it. Obviously, it won't help you if you disrespect your email service, and open a virus flagged attachment.
4. Through your web browser. This is where the hosts file comes into play. If you block all known IP address for ads, viruses, trojans, malware, etc, you dramatically cut down on viruses that get to your computer whilst web surfing. This is the most useful method to implement on a computer that some else has uncontrolled access to. Once I stuck the mvps hosts file on my family's computers, using HostsMan to autoupdate it, I stopped having to triage with their viruses.
Anything that slips through? That's what Windows Defender and Malwarebytes are for. But the objective is to block off the main routes of entry to your computer first. Thus, instead of an anti-virus software being the primary defense, they are a secondary defense. That's why I can run it as a scheduled task, rather than having it active in the background.
Obviously a setup like the above won't stop you picking up viruses off of Pirate Bay, or from a torrent, or from a virus laden USB drive, or if you connect your laptop to random wifi hotspots. If those situations happen to you, then you've got to get an active anti-virus program.
I understand they are two different.......features?... of browsers; I just don't know how they work together.
The hosts file is a part of the operating system that tells windows how to handle specific connections. In this specific case, it's telling windows to disallow any communication with a list of addresses known to be related to malware.
DNS is the system that finds web pages for you when you attempt to navigate to a URL. DNS works a lot like a glorified phonebook, you put in a name (like www.google.com), and it gives you an address (an IP address, specifically) that your computer actually uses to establish contact. There are a number of central DNS servers worldwide, that maintain the DNS registrar, those servers have to service a lot of traffic, and so to reduce their load your ISP probably mirrors one of them and the default dns settings for your network are probably set to your ISP's DNS server. The drawback of the current system is that it would be pretty trivial for your ISP to censor the internet by blacklisting dns entries. In order to help reduce DNS load further, and to resist possible censorship, google maintains their own DNS servers that they make available for public use. Given that they are provided by google, their responsiveness is pretty high, and requests to their servers likely resolve faster than ones to your ISP.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with Avast. I have it installed on dozens of computers -- including computers that have no justification for their continued existence -- and it runs just fine. It's non-intrusive, efficient, and free.
The problems started then, with Avast freaking out when I tried to install Office 2007 from the discs, and only got worse to the point where my new computer was crashing all the time.
One format and reinstall (minus Avast) later, and I had no more problems like that ever again.
You might have been lucky, but you are one of a very few people I have ever talked about antivirus software with that haven't had horror stories regarding Avast.
I have a work around where I pause my downloads if I need to open media. This doesn't solve my youtube troubles.
Back to waiting for Avast's hacked forums to load back up.
Definitely what you want to see from your Antivirus company...
One instance does not a reputable dataset make.
It sounds like it's more an issue with your computer and/or browser than it is with Avast.
At the risk of sounding like an Avast fanboy in this thread, your comment was highly disingenuous.
Avast is a maker of antivirus software; not of web-based forum software. It'd be like saying Mike and Jerry are shitty webcomic guys if Vanilla got hacked.
This was a fresh installation on a fresh drive after many years of Avast on XP, so my issue, whose solution is buried in the avast forums, has to do with windows 7.
The program isn't perfect, but it isn't running well on my system.
Trying other avenues of research but eh....
edit: After a great deal of diving and research, I learned that I had to turn off Webshield.ini which is in
C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast
and then add the lines
[General]
UseStreamFilter=0
to the ini after using Notepad to open the ini in administrator mod and add the line.
I think it worked, but I'm still downing CPU cycles likes nobody's business.
meh