NEW Version: 19.4.2374 (April 2019)

[EmoHobo]

I'm not going to pretend to know how avast scans files, I'm guessing it's constantly doing it passively in the background and not just when you run a virus scan, so it has to stay running at all times I imagine, explaining it like that makes me understand more about what it is, it just seems to be using a lot of memory on my machine.  Is Avast really so susceptible to outside tampering that something like this was needed to be done though or was this just a precaution in the ever changing world of cyber security?

[igor]

I'm not going to pretend to know how avast scans files, I'm guessing it's constantly doing it passively in the background and not just when you run a virus scan, so it has to stay running at all times I imagine, explaining it like that makes me understand more about what it is, it just seems to be using a lot of memory on my machine.  Is Avast really so susceptible to outside tampering that something like this was needed to be done though or was this just a precaution in the ever changing world of cyber security?

This is definitely a precaution... the scanner contains a lot of archive unpackers and format parsers - which is a complex and sensitive code, more likely to contain security bugs (than say UI-related code).
I'm certainly not saying we're pushing that code to a separate process so that we don't have to worry about security - this is another failsafe that can help if something bad happens (a number of bugs was found in the past few years in various antivirus products which might have had rather serious consequences if the bad guys had learned about them first, so this is not just an impossible scenario that can never happen).

I don't think it should have any significant effect on memory usage; the modules (DLLs) are shared between processes by the operating system, the memory overhead of the scanner itself should be rather small - and the memory used temporarily during the scan (e.g. to unpack archives) would be allocated anyway, just in a different process.

[EmoHobo]

Alright, next time and I know this isn't your decision, but could you work to include that in the patch notes, seeing something like that suddenly running and claiming to be from avast for sure made me think something had been compromised on my system, since there was NOTHING about the new process in the patch notes on this update.

Transparency is really important to me when it comes to Antivirus companies as we are trusting our systems to them.

[bruce_b]

Igor, What is Avast going to do about Behavior Shield not coming up as Enabled on Windows 10 Home 64 ? ? ? ?
Please tell the coders to get this fixed  ... Thanks

[igor]

Alright, next time and I know this isn't your decision, but could you work to include that in the patch notes, seeing something like that suddenly running and claiming to be from avast for sure made me think something had been compromised on my system, since there was NOTHING about the new process in the patch notes on this update.

Transparency is really important to me when it comes to Antivirus companies as we are trusting our systems to them.

I don't think this has anything to do with transparency - and it also may be kinda too technical for the (usually quite high-level) update notes.
I mean, this is an internal implementation detail - we also don't announce that X new DLLs appeared in the installation folder or a new driver in system folder (both are basically the same as an EXE and a new process), some other disappeared, new registry key starts being used...

As for the system looking compromised, I get that - but you can easily verify that the executable module is in our installation folder (which should normally be protected by Avast self-defense) and that it's properly signed with Avast Software digital signature. Now I would say there's no harm in mentioning it in the release notes - but since it's released gradually, I guess it might cause confusion in this particular case (people asking why the process isn't there even though according to the release notes it should be and wondering if the program works properly)... I'm not sure. (But no, I don't write the release notes )

[NON]

Thanks for the new release

[nkmnavarro]

What is aswEngSrv.exe and can I disable it?  You know how I feel about antiviruses suddenly running new executables.

I have this one too. I want to disable it too. Im using android emulator(Nox Player) and this aswEngSrv.exe suddenly hogged 85-90% of memory. Can i delete it? Any solution to this one please. 

[Tomaso]

The offline installers doesn't contain the 2019 GUI yet (at least not the free version one).
Only after Avast has connected to the internet does the new GUI get downloaded.
This results in a tray icon that doesn't respond for a long time.
The same thing happened last year.
Devs should make sure that the offline installers always comes with the latest GUI by default!

[Adam Kertesz]

Igor, What is Avast going to do about Behavior Shield not coming up as Enabled on Windows 10 Home 64 ? ? ? ?
Please tell the coders to get this fixed  ... Thanks

The same happens on Windows 10 Pro 64.
Adam Kertesz

[bruce_b]

Now I know it was not something I did and that others are seeing the issue as well. Now we just need Avast to fix it

[baumgrenze]

Many thanks to all who worked very hard to repair and test patch that addressed the problem of CHKDSK not working on boot (Win7/Pro x64) and for doing it in record time.

I will try to remember all the things this confusing experience taught me in the process.

baumgrenze

[SpeedyPC]

Boot time scan is missing in the virus scan section in the latest version of Avast Premier.

I’ve already done the Avast repair, nothing, no boot time scan and I’ve done a clean installed, same issue no boot time scan showing up in the virus scan section.

Did Avast removed boot time scan in the latest Avast version ??

[Asyn]

Did Avast removed boot time scan in the latest Avast version ??

Nope, it's available here.

[SpeedyPC]

Did Avast removed boot time scan in the latest Avast version ??

Nope, it's available here.

That’s wired, I’m not sure if this might be a bug issue for W8.1 OS, which I cannot get the boot time scan in the virus scan section showing up.

[Asyn]

Did Avast removed boot time scan in the latest Avast version ??

Nope, it's available here.

That’s wired, I’m not sure if this might be a bug issue for W8.1 OS, which I cannot get boot time scan in virus scan section showing up.

Probably not, check my sig.