Hello, I purchased a three-year license for BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011, and it's causing extreme slowdown in all major Internet browsers on my computer (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.). Every 20-30 minutes, the browsers will slow to a crawl (1-2 minutes to load a typical website) for 5-10 minutes at a stretch.
I've done extensive testing to determine that BitDefender is the culprit. To begin with, the hard drive of the computer on which BitDefender is installed was reformatted as of yesterday. I reinstalled Windows XP SP3, fully updated the operating system via Windows Update, re-installed all drivers, re-installed various basic programs, and also installed BitDefender. I defragmented the hard drive after all of those installations. Every application I've tested so far (including resource-intensive games) works perfectly, and I don't think my system can get any cleaner than that.
I know my Internet connection (broadband cable) isn't causing the slowdown, because while the browsers slow to a crawl, other applications running on the same computer (such as Valve's Steam) can continue downloading uninterrupted at a rate of 2 mb/sec. Additionally, I have a secondary Windows XP SP3 computer (without BitDefender) connected to the same router — and on that computer, the browsers work just fine during the main computer's browser slowdowns.
Finally, the last time the extreme browser slowdown started, I immediately went to uninstall BitDefender to see if the browsers would speed back up. Sure enough, as the uninstallation process began and BitDefender shut down, the browsers immediately returned to normal connection speed.
To sum up:
- It's not my hardware or the operating system at fault; those are clean and fully updated.
- It's not the Internet connection at fault, be it cable, router or modem.
- It's not any individual browser, as I tested several and they're all equally affected.
- As soon as BitDefender shuts down completely, the browser slowdown disappears.
I'm 99% certain BitDefender is at fault. I'm really hoping there are some settings I can tweak to fix the problem, because otherwise BitDefender is completely unusable for me. Also, turning off all of its features to allow my browser to work properly would pretty much defeat the point of having it. I switched to BitDefender from Kaspersky, and I am not happy.
