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Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: REDACTED on May 01, 2018, 04:52:43 PM

Title: Avast scanning random stuff randomly.
Post by: REDACTED on May 01, 2018, 04:52:43 PM
I was running process monitor today to check what was slowing down a different program. Much to my surprise i noticed that most of the file actions performed were not by the program in question, but by AvastSvc.
It completely dominated the list of events and was apparently checking out texture files from a game i haven't even played in years.
The problem is: I have had all shields deliberately turned off for some time now. My laptop is not a fast one and i don't have the option to "just buy a better one".
Additionally the thing bottlenecking performance is always HDD R/W speed, so avast just deciding on its own to read and write when specifically set not to do so is a real issue for me.
Build: 18.3.3860.316
OS: Win7x64 HomePremium
Title: Re: Avast scanning random stuff randomly.
Post by: theunidada on May 01, 2018, 05:52:43 PM
This reminds of an issue i'm having myself, but i need some info to make sure.

Basically what i found is that there is a component in Avast called "SWCU" or "Software Cleanup" that scans the system once a week and updates a log file called "SWCUEngine.log". The funny part is that this happens even if Software Cleanup is uninstalled.
Could you please look for that log file and check if the date in the last entry matches when you experienced that HDD flood? Perhaps be more accurate about when it happened more precisely.

This is the post with my issue in case you are interested:
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=214520.0
Title: Re: Avast scanning random stuff randomly.
Post by: REDACTED on May 02, 2018, 01:51:38 AM
I couldn't find that log file. Maybe it would've helped if you told me where to look for it lol.
Title: Re: Avast scanning random stuff randomly.
Post by: theunidada on May 02, 2018, 11:32:49 AM
C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\log\SWCUEngine.log

You might want to spend a minute looking for a file search program such as Everything, UltraSearch, Lookeen or similar.
Title: Re: Avast scanning random stuff randomly.
Post by: theunidada on May 09, 2018, 04:38:39 PM
I'm very curious to know if it happened again and if you managed to correlate the contents of that log file with the occurrences of these scans. It happened to me again today at 13:30.