Is XP SP3 or AVG8 Slowing down my PC?

[planecrazy.eu]

Title says it all.

Installed last night in my new machine (laptop) XP SP3 and then AVG8. Thats it really, went to bed, etc...

This morning when i came to do some work all was fine. But then I go to check my emails, and IE7 hangs for around 30 seconds doing nothing at all, then another good 10 seconds to show the webpage.

After its been put in the prefetch, still is real slow, about a 10 sec hang, and then at least another 10 seconds for the webpage to show.

Tried downloading a file, and my speeds are around half of what i have been getting.

I have 8MB Broadband, so MSN Home should not take 10 seconds to load.

Once open, pages are still taking 2/3 seconds to come up.

Maybe its the ISP, but my other machine seems to be OK.

I know AVG seems to interact with search engine results, so is this why?

Or is it SP3 causing the issues.

Or =) is it just me

[green granite]

Try sw off AVG temporally and then try again, but only go to safe sites.

[Cheerio]

I changed from AVG free to AVG 8.0 on two XP machines (thanks for the very useful info here).

The kids desktop seems to be just as usual, overburdened with security and games, and all the better for more security.

The laptop is a fairly reasonable spec, not blistering but adequate.
I only use this for running the BBC IPlayer through a big monitor and nothing else.

It seems that running a big monitor with the IPlayer is already pushing it pretty close to 100% of its capability, and switching to AVG 8 pushed it over the egde, because it ended up as a 5 second refresh set of stills instead of video.

I removed AVG 8.0 and it went back to normal again. I haven't put any antivirus back on it yet, but for some reason AVG free edition does seem to be a bit lighter on its toes than 8.0. Purely subjective though.

[twiggs]

It is more likely that the safesearch and/or linkscanner features in AVG 8.0 is the culprit rather than XPSP3.
Try uninstalling or disabling these features.
You can get the method from the AVG website FAQ (http://free.avg.com/faq.num-1241#faq_1241) 1254,1253 and 1338 or for a more comprehensive toning down of AVG, try the instructions in the Tweakguides tweaking Companion. (http://forums.tweakguides.com/showpost.php?p=84601&postcount=2)

What type of hard drive does your laptop have?
It wouldn't be a netbook with an SSD would it?

[planecrazy.eu]

lol, nope, not a NetBook.

Usual spec laptop, C2Duo, 2mb Cache, 100GB HDD, 1GB Ram, 128 Dedi Graphics.

If i disable link scanner and web-shield, i get it down to 5 seconds to open, and then 2 seconds to display the page.

Having never counted the seconds a page takes to load in recent times, i am guessing its not far off how it used to be.

So, do i need to have web-shield on?

Link scanner is no use to me, as i would go on the website it warned me about if i wanted to.

Maybe i should think about a new bit of AV Software?

Was looking at Nod32.

But yet again there is

- McA
- Norton
- Kav
- Aavira
- Avast
- Comodo

How does one choose these days?

[Tarq57]

I guess one chooses by browsing many user (as opposed to sponsored) reviews/reports, and then trying a few out. Any reputable AV will have a full-featured trial version. Some have free versions. (Including AVG.)
I've read excellent user reports about Norton 2009. Earlier Norton products were bloated and took over the machine. Apparently the 2009 version (both AV and NIS) is light, fast, and effective. It has some converts.
I use Avast! Home (free). The only things disabled in the free version compared to the paid version is the ability to schedule scans, and script blocking. I don't need those features so it doesn't bother me. Some other free versions disable or partly cripple detection/cleaning ability. Avast has never given me a reason to want to change. It just works.
Avira has a happy following. Always scores well at test sites. (as does Avast.)
McA has a Norton-like reputation for bloat. So do some versions of KAV. Comodo is a comprehensive package, basically a suite for free. The firewall/HIPS components are among the best. The AV component is still young, and will take a little longer for detection rates to be "up there" with the best. The HIPS is good enough that maybe that doesn't matter. The components can be installed separately.

With Avast, I'm also using a two way software firewall, Threatfire, (a behaviour blocker) and the MVPS hosts file/SpywareBlaster for blocking known bad sites, and Comodo Memory Firewall for buffer overruns. All seems to work nicely.
That's an example of making your own free security suite.

[jimtherev]

I go with twiggs. Linkscan poured treacle on most of my internet work - inc email reception. Linkscan disabled - back to normal.

Wish everything were as easy.

[planecrazy.eu]

Well AVG has gone, and so has all my issues.

Back to Comodo for all things but the AV.

Gone with Nod32 for AV.

All is running perfect now, with nothing going slow as far as i can tell.

AVG Free runs way better?

There was two processes that on idle took 100% processor. One was the real time scan, the other one was AVGCSVX or something similar, which i take to be the real time service? that took from 30-70% depending upon if the system was idle or not.

Causes issues with FlighSim FPS too, which has now gone with NOD32.