I've been running the AVG Free edition for years now, I have no problems with the program EXCEPT... since the new version of AVG was released a few weeks ago, doing a Scan Computer - Complete Test, now seems to take ages.

I have the option ticked to check all files, not just infectable files. Under the previous releases, a scan would take about 20 to 25 minutes for me (I only ever have about 8GB of data on my computer, on an 71GB C: drive, I don't save music etc to the computer except to download to burn and then erase from the computer, the free space is usually about 88%). Now the scan is taking well over an hour, up to 1.5 hours!

Has any one else had this problem or is it just me? It is AVG Program version 7.5.432. Apart from this, I have no other problems with the program. I used to do a scan twice week, now I have to set it running when I know I don't need to use the computer.

I haven't changed any settings on my computer and have the same firewall etc.

Any ideas or suggestions?

I've personally noticed such behaviour with AVG as well.
About the only suggestion I'd have would be to uninstall AVG, restart Windows when prompted to do so, then reinstall AVG to have a clean installation of it.

Edit:
One antivirus scanner that it loads faster than AVG and has never suffered from the mysterious slowdown is Avira AntiVir.

This has been a common problem since 7.5 was released. Fortunatley it's very easily explained and fixed. When 7.5 is installed from a fresh install you will see a first run wizard. In this set up process you can select to set AVG scans as high or low priority. Set it to high priority and it scans much faster than the low priority setting.

The problem is you can only see this first run wizard if you do a clean install. If you upgraded from 7.1 and followed AVG's instructions from their web site to use the "repair" option than you will not see the first run wizard. Also there is no option to change the priority setting after the program is installed. It must be done on the first run wizard.

You will need to do a fresh install to fix this problem. There are many threads on the Griftsoft forums about this. Here is a link to one on how to fix the problem http://forum.grisoft.cz/freeforum/read.php...,backpage=6,sv=

Problem is the slowdown even happened way back in the version 6 era. That priority you speak of is something I totally forgot about when clean installing AVG but it's been a few weeks since I switched to AntiVir.

AntiVir at least allows to change the scan priority at anytime in:
Configuration->enable 'Expert Mode'->Under 'Scanner' click 'Scan' and set the priority to Normal or High depending upon your computer specifications, see screenshot. AntiVir must however also be set to normal or high to decrease scan times because the default setting is Low as in slow.

Is this the same as changing the priority in task manager? (would save reinstalling to fix it)