Hello all, I am wondering if you can help me with a problem with Avast. I've been searching the support forum for the past couple of hours or so and changing my settings accordingly in windows safemode, but have thus far unable to solve my problem (other than an uninstall of Avast). Similiar to others, the problem is ashServ.exe taking up 50% of memory (I believe this means 100% CPU usage for 1 CPU in the dual core). The occurance of this seems random at first, but it's getting more and more frequently. Right now it's happening everytime I boot up.
When this happens, system response will be extremely slow, and my windows taskbar will stop responding (and thus I cannot even see if the Avast icon is spinning or not, nor can I click on it to see what exactly is being scanned). What I know is that this process hangs windows for good and nothing will proceed even if I leave the PC along for 10-20 minutes. The process also stops other processes and programs that are running after it. For example, SoundMax will not be initialized so I will not hear some system sounds (instead getting the hardware beep from my machine), and MSN messenger will not run or only run half-way and hangs.
When I open the Services list, Avast's status will show as "starting" rather than "started" or "stopped", and I cannot choose to start or stop it.
-Windows XP SP2
-No other anti-virus programs
-No other anti-spyware/adware programs
-No firewall programs, other than window's default firewall (I do have a Linksys wireless router that may have firewall, I have not yet looked into it).
Thanks for your help in advance. If you need any information, let me know.