avast 4.6 Home Edition Memory Hog

[cinderian]

I am concerned that my avast 4.6 Home Edition might have a virus or is overworked, or has a bug?  I run XP PRO and in the Services list (from Admin Tools) are the Avast programs supposed to be listed as manual or automatic?

Also when I run HiJack This, ashserv.exe is listed as Unknown as well as aswUpdSv.exe is listed as Unknown.  THe other programs are listed as ALWIL Software.

The ashServ.exe is at 32,202,790,482 I/O Read Bytes in 13:45 CPU Time or VM Size of 15,264 K or Peak Memory Usage of 59,716 K.

The ashMaiSv.exe  is at 321,299,199 I/O Read Bytes in 00:09 CPU Time or VM Size of 2,780K or Peak Memory Usage of 9,560 K.

The CPU Time has not increased since writing this message on either of them.  Are these numbers normal? 

[szc]

Perfectly normal, and don't worry anything...

Mail scanner and WEB scanner are the only two instances that suppose to run on MANUAL, everything else regarding avast! runs AUTOMATICALY under SERVICES.

Also when I run HiJack This, ashserv.exe is listed as Unknown as well as aswUpdSv.exe is listed as Unknown.  THe other programs are listed as ALWIL Software.

Well, known "bug" with HijackThis... hopefully someone from their team will recognize it soon and fix it... EDIT: actually it's not a bug, rather overlook...

Do Not worry  !
Cheers !

[sded]

Go to Avast! On Access Protection Control and see what your run times are.  These are the cumulatives over the run time of the program (since you last booted).  What is the number for ashwebsv.exe?  Since all of the files you open go through ashserv, all of the web pages go through ashwebsv, and all of the mail and news go through ashmaisv, you can accumulate quite a byte count over a day or more.  Data shown is over about a day.

[MFB]

cinderian, these high resource are normal, they will come drop down.  Also ignore the Hijack log regarding about ashServ.exe and aswUpdSv.exe since it's a error that Hijackthis has.  (Hopefully it can be solve soon.) 

[woodyear99]

What's the point of P2P and instant messaging scans if I have the standard shield setup to scan all files being created/modified? If I disable those 2 services won't standard shield still intercept incoming files?

[RejZoR]

Everything looks perfectly normal to me (it's not even high).
I/O Read/Write are also normal. It's antivirus after all. It reaquires lots of memory/disk readings which are registered under all I/O columns. You can also see that reads are much higher than writes since avast! is mainly only checking files (reading).

[MFB]

What's the point of P2P and instant messaging scans if I have the standard shield setup to scan all files being created/modified? If I disable those 2 services won't standard shield still intercept incoming files?

Instant Messaging scans and P2P scans are like the first line of defense and Standard shield is the secondary defense.  Network Shield, Webshield, etc. are like firewalls to block virus from entering your computer while Standard Shield detects virus in your computer already and ask for you to Delete, repair, or  send it to a virus chest. 

[woodyear99]

yeah but even if I have P2P and Instant Messaging scans off wouldn't the standard shield always pick them up since it is using the same engine anyway? I set it to high so it checks any new files created/modified thus any p2p/IM received file would be scanned as soon as it was received...

[MFB]

Yeah but Standard shield would detect them inside your computer already.  P2P and Instant Messaging Shield will detect the virus before it enters your computer.   

[cinderian]

Thank you everyone for your answers and suggestions.  I feel more comfortable now.   Anyone want to comment on explorer.exe running at 45,000K or almost 30,000k VM size.  I tried to search for explorer.exe but get a system error.  Virus??

Thanks again everyone. 

cinderian

[cinderian]

and one more thing, how many iexplore.exe should be running at any given time?

You are all great!  And I am off topic.   

[DavidR]

and one more thing, how many iexplore.exe should be running at any given time?

You are all great!  And I am off topic.   

iexplore.exe seems to have one occurance for each IE window you have open, unlike the tabbed browsers that have multiple tabs within a window but only one occurance of the program.

You might want to edit your duplicate post (you can't delete it), something like, 'Edit: - duplicate post'