Logon very slow every now and then

I would test with antivirus disabled. My results were pretty clear.

I tried disabling Avast! and indeed the logon process seemed to be very fast. Still a bit hard to know for sure though since I don't see this problem on every logon but only from time to time.

Anyway I posted a question about this over in Avast! forums so let's see what happens and if someone else running Avast! has experienced the same issue.

The other thing to bear in mind is that your anti-virus need only be off between shutdown and restart. If you turn it back on after restart you should not have any email or web browsing risk.

That is actually a good idea because there is an option to disable Avast! until next reboot. Not sure though if that will start Avast! prior or post boot. Otherwise I can of course choose the disable permanently option and hope I'll remember to enable it again after logon.

Or...otherwise I guess it could just learn to live with the problem. Not really a big problem considering I normally boot my computer once a day.

Edited to add I got a response over in the Avast! forum where someone told me a possible reason this happens with Avast! enabled is Avast! always checks for updated virus patterns etc at logon and that makes sense.