Avg

I've been a loyal AVG user for about two years now. I'm running windows XP home on an averatec 3250 notebook with an AMD athalon procesor and 512 megs of RAM. I I've noticed that when AVG runs a full system scan, everything on the PC runs unbearabley sluggishly. On a desktop, I could just let it run overnight, but this machine get way to hot for that sort of thing.

I was wondering if there was anyway to get the AVG scan to run lighter or, alternatively, can anyone recommend an antivirus system that wont totally sap my resources?

 

Not having the same problem I can only suggest searching Major Geeks "Antivirus" files one that alot here swear by aother than AVG is Avast Free available at this link on MG http://www.majorgeeks.com/Avast_Home_Edition_d1968.html Hope that Helps

 

have been using avast now for some time after trialing many antivirus programs over many months and i have to admit it is splendid.

it runs a very small fingerprint whilst offering superior all round protection, and wont suck your system resources to the point of frustration.

i was an avid AVG fan before i discovered this gem! (thanks to MG)

 

fingerprint ? Do you mean footprint ? lol

I run avast on one of my systems and AVG on the other, because I can't choose between them, they both seem to do the job they need to do without any problems.

I've never noticed the issue you are describing with AVG but any program that is required to scan all drives/files/folders is going to cause at least a little bit of a lag effect.

I'm not aware of a setting in AVG that will let you reduce the thread priority

Since avast and avg are both free it wouldn't be too much hassle to uninstall one and try the other and if you don't like avast you could always return to avg.

One word of warning, I think avast has a slight conflict with ZA pro versions so you may have issues with avast if you are running that version of ZA

 

finger, foot.....same man, different haircut..hehe

 

Here's what I do. I run Process Explorer from Sysinternals ( available on MG ) Then I fire up AVG to scan for viruses. I look for the process ( in Process Explorer) that is consuming cycles. Select that process ( with mouse) and right click. On the context menu, select "Set Priority" If you set the base priority from 8 to 4 ( idle) your scan will consume less cycles than your higher priority 8 programs. It's still risky to burn DVDs while virus-scanning but it should let other programs run just fine.

 

Thank you all, those are great ideas and I will be giving each one a try.

Prometheos, I also use Process Explorer for my process exploring needs. I've never adjusted the priority setting on anything because I was affraid it would delete teh intarwebs. Are there any consequences to adjusting the priority (other than a scan taking more time, which I'm totally fine with)?

 

If the base priority is 8 or less, you can adjust downward without any special worries. I don't mess with high priority processes, because, they're high for good reason. Also, I've never had any need to adjust a process priority higher. But, process hogs, like virus-scans are prime targets for reduction. I do it often.