Com.avast.cleanup.scan using large amount of cpu and memory

[rag900]

I posted this several days ago and there has been no response from anyone at AVAST.  Is there a reason for that?  Have I not given enough information?

I am using AVAST Security 14.6 (free) on a Macbook Pro running 10.13.6.  A process named com.avast.cleanup.scan has started consuming a huge amount of cpu.  Rebooting and reinstalling Avast makes no difference.  If I kill the process it starts up sometime later.

I can't find any information on what this process does, why it is running or if it is related to the Avast Cleanup product which I do not have installed. 

Any advice on how to tame or remove this beast would be gratefully accepted.

Edit to add: Just noticed that the process also consumes the memory 10GB. It increases almost linearly with time.

thanks
Bob

[sjoholm13]

I'm having this same issue, only difference is that I'm running 10.14.6.

Have you or anybody else found a solution? I'm getting increasingly annoyed by Avast and their apparent lack of care.

[sjoholm13]

I deleted the com.avast.cleanup.scan exec file from the Contents > Backend > utils folder, and then killed the process (alt click Avast Security App in the Applications folder > Show packaged contents, or whatever it says in English, I'm running the OS in my language). Seems to have worked. Not able to reboot system at the moment because of work and stuff, but it might at least be a temporary fix.

[rag900]

I deleted the com.avast.cleanup.scan exec file from the Contents > Backend > utils folder, and then killed the process (alt click Avast Security App in the Applications folder > Show packaged contents, or whatever it says in English, I'm running the OS in my language). Seems to have worked. Not able to reboot system at the moment because of work and stuff, but it might at least be a temporary fix.

Thanks for that. But presumably com.avast.cleanup.scan is actually meant to do something. So is permanently removing it going to cause problems?  Does anyone know if it is essential?

BTW, I find that if I kill that process sometimes it starts shortly afterwards and I kill it again. Then it stays inactive for several days.  But it always evntually comes back and grinds my mac into the dust. 

[akirastudio]

hi all,
i have the same problem, Avast take 80% of cpu. the fans going 5000 rpm...
any solution?
thanks

[Alan139]

I had this problem too, I suspect it's been happening since the latest upgrade to Avast 14.6. Slowing down my iMac to such a degree that I had to uninstall it, after which everything returned to normal. Having re-installed the latest version, the problem has gone. I have not had the same problem on my MacBook Air.

[rag900]

I wouldn't be too confident that that has cured the problem - yet.  I find all is fine for several days and then the proccess starts up and grinds the mac into the dust again.

I am a newbie here, so have a question about this forum:

It appears that some AVAST staff respond to some queries.  Is this the case? 

If so, while I can understand the level of support for free software may not be high, why have they not answered my simple question, namely, what does com.avast.cleanupscan do and (until this problem is fixed) can it be safely removed as suggested by sjoholm13?

[jakub.bednar]

Hello everyone,

we apologize for the problems caused. We are investigating the issue as it did not occur during our pre-release testing.

Can you please tell me what exactly means "large amount of cpu"? How many % of CPU usage does it take? Does the tool finish in few minutes or does it keep running? It is a tool that is expected to run for only a very limited amount of time - few minutes a day tops.

I have seen in this thread an advice to remove the binary. This might fix the CPU issue, but will break the application signature. This will stop any privileged operations from working as we are doing signature checks prior to performing privileged operations. Therefore you will not be able to stop any shields, restore files from Quarantine and other operations as well.

Thank you for your reports and patience,

Jakub

[david1318]

90%, 100% CPU.

Fans blowing full blast.

On a MacBookPro 2011 with 10.13.6, fully updated.

cwd
/
txt
/Applications/Avast.app/Contents/Backend/utils/com.avast.cleanup.scan
txt
/usr/share/icu/icudt59l.dat
txt
/private/var/folders/pk/rfr7xvwn3m3b92stprn_v5rr0000gn/0/com.apple.LaunchServices-221-v2.csstore
txt
/usr/lib/dyld
txt
/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
0
/dev/null
1
/dev/null
2
/dev/null

[rag900]

Thanks for responding Jacub.  My Mac Book Pro running 10.13.6 details:

Model Name:   MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:   MacBookPro8,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core i5
  Processor Speed:   2.4 GHz
  Number of Processors:   1
  Total Number of Cores:   2
  L2 Cache (per Core):   256 KB
  L3 Cache:   3 MB
  Memory:   8 GB
  Boot ROM Version:   87.0.0.0.0
  SMC Version (system):   1.68f99
  Serial Number (system):   C17GV8VTDV13
  Hardware UUID:   EB8D7484-06FC-538D-A03D-0AF368F4ED17
  Sudden Motion Sensor:
  State:   Enabled

To answer your quesions:
1. By large  cpu usage I mean over 100%.

2. But memory seems the real killer.  It grows almost linearly in time, to >8GB and  then mac effectively freezes with little response from apps and coloured circle of death appears almost constantly. Looks like a classic memory leak to me.

3. So it keeps running until the mac becomes unusable.

I don't seem to ever need to use any of the privileged operations you mentioned.  So is it OK (ie. no danger) to keep killing the process until there is a fix?

thanks for looking into this
Bob

[jakub.bednar]

Thank you for the update Bob,

we believe we have found the source of the issue and have released a HOTFIX of Avast 14.6. (2afad9aab9aa-14.6).

Please let us know whether it solved the problem for you.

Thank you again for reaching us with the issue.

Best regards,

Jakub

[rag900]

Thanks Jakub

I wasn't sure what I had to do to get the hotfix  -  if I had to reinstall the whole app or just run the update.  But I just ran check for updates within avast and it reported the version Avast 14.6. (2afad9aab9aa-14.6).  So that is probably OK and I will let you know if the problem recurs or not (the latter would take a few days to be sure).

But I thought I might be thorough anyway and reinstall the whole app, which requires me to first uninstall the current version.  But I was not able to - I got the message "com.avast.uninstall.app cannot be opened".    I tried rebooting and then uninstalling, but with the same result.
.

[rag900]

It's been 5 days and the probem has not occurred again, so it looks like that fix worked because previously the problem would recur after 3-4 days.

Justas I was typing this I caught the process running for the first time since I applied the fix and it used only a few percent of cpu, around 8MB and completed using 50MB briefly.  So it seems it is definitely fixed.

(The other issue I raised has been resolved in another thread.)

thanks again Jakub

Bob

Thank you for the update Bob,

we believe we have found the source of the issue and have released a HOTFIX of Avast 14.6. (2afad9aab9aa-14.6).

Please let us know whether it solved the problem for you.

Thank you again for reaching us with the issue.

Best regards,

Jakub