AVG forum: Intrusive Background Activity - a problem with AVG 9?

Task Manager indicates activity only in System Idle Process when the bursts occur; I cannot see any indication for any of the 50-odd other processes. I'm not an expert and don't know if there is any other means of checking.

Thanks for you interest.

Many thanks to MarkFlax for putting me on the path to a solution. I could see that several processes (including some AVG) were using the CPU very briefly, but easily the most prominent was jqs.exe. This reminded me that there had been a Java update around the same time as AVG 9. So I disabled Java Quick Starter, which I don't need. Job done!

Thanks again and apologies to AVG for my jumping to the wrong conclusion.

i'm watching my task manager window and jqs.exe is not the problem. all the activity is coming from avgchsvx.exe. this new version is no good, my computer is slow to respond, slow to surf the web and i'm tired of seeing my hd get worked so hard. i am pulling avg9 off my computers.

avgcsrvx is involved the auto scan process. That's is too intrusive for me and I've disabled it in favour of manual scans (see previous post).

I've solved the original problem and decided it was not down to AVG. Even so, I am still dubious about AVG's performance and my scepticism is not allayed by the experiences of many others here and in other forums.

I've decided to replace my middle-aged laptop and, while AVG can stay for the time being, I doubt that I'll let it anywhere near the new model.

Thanks for the encouragement, Mark. In the event, I deleted AVG from my existing laptop in order to try Avira. Don't like it, not least because it won't update properly (a common problem according to posts elsewhere).

I set a restore point before removing AVG so I'm going back there. You've encouraged me sufficiently to stick with AVG after all and to try it on my new system, which is considerably faster than this one.

I installed AVG 9 just after a batch of Microsoft updates having first taken a backup, and then had all the problems of sites hanging, programs not running, high CPU usage, etc. I wasn't sure what had caused the problem so thought ok I'll just do a system restore.... no way! All my restore points had been wiped!
I removed all the Microsoft updates and spent hours playing with settings, reloading programs, abusing the wife, etc. The one thing I didn't suspect was AVG. I have used it for ten years through various versions without any problems and it just didn't occur to me that this could be the problem. Eventually I typed "webpages hanging" into Google and found all the pages of problems with AVG 9.
I have now removed AVG and my computer is almost back to normal (some websites are still slower loading than before, particularly Google).

My main complaint is the problem of the system restore points being wiped, probably preventing me from ever being 100% happy with my computer again. Very poor show AVG, I will not be using their products again and will be advising everyone I can to avoid them.
I have now installed Avast and so far am happy with it.

Has you installed AVG 9 very recently? If so, it may help to wait a while. avgchsvx works hard for some time after installation. In my case (with only 20Gb of used space) it was several hours, with a shorter but more intensive burst the next day. Since then, it's been quiet.

(Apologies if you know this already, but AVG 9 Scan Optimisation identifies files that cannot be infected and isolates them from the scan process to save time and effort; avgchsvx's hard work just after installation is the intitial set-up process for this. The daily auto scan is too intrusive so I scan manually at a slack time. AVG 9 takes about 2hrs compared with 4hrs with AVG 8. So the optimisation does seem to work.)

See my post today. Problem now totally solved .... .... by removing AVG!

I guess it depends on what you have on your computer.I can only go by my own experience as described in the previous post. With around 20 Gb, not much by modern standards, the optimisation scan took several hours over 2 days. If it operates on a pro rata basis, someone storing lots of videos will have to be VERY patient. As reported, I'm now running Avira on my old laptop and McAfee on the new, more powerful one. No problems to report with either so far.

Yes, the daily AVG update process is VERY intrusive. But it's relatively brief and not unexpected (except that it always seems to occur at a time of its own choosing, some while after that specified by the user).

However, updating is not what I and others found so problematic. Rather, it was the continual intrusions caused by constant background activity. I was able solve this only by removing AVG (and installing Avira, which is fine).

For the record, I now have my new laptop. This came fitted with a McAfee suite. It's early days but I've had no reason to complain so far. To compare with AVG's performance on the old machine would be unfair as the new one has a much greater capacity. AVG might well behave better on the new one, but I was so unhappy with it that I won't be trying to find out! If I decide not to keep McAfee when I have to start paying for it, I'll take Avira as the replacement.

I don't know if this is relevant to your problem (and I know I've said this before) but it seems to have fixed mine.

I thought I'd look at the AVG forums before uninstalling the program and downloading something else and I found this:

http://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=40443

It's a known problem and there's a small file to download for a temporary fix until the next updates are released. I hope it helps. It's been nearly 24 hours and I haven't had any more intrusions (so far) since installing the fix.