ashwebSV.exe using 65,840 MB Memory

[Libra]

Hi,
  I have Windows XPsp2 Home and installed Avast Home in May.  I have updated through the internal updater twice and now have version 4.8.1229. 
  I noticed that Task Manager shows ashwebSV.exe as using 65,840 memory.  The CPU usage is 0.  Is that normal memory usage?  I thought it might be high.  The ashSV.exe is using 19,440 memory.

  Thank you.

Sincerely, Libra

[igor]

If you were downloading something bigger (at the moment or before), then yes, it's certainly possible.

[Libra]

Hi igor,
  Thank you for your reply.  I didn't download anything big.  The computer has been running for 5 days now and I noticed the memory used by ashwebSV.exe on Tuesday to be 62,552, on Wednesday it was 65,840 and today it is 66,792.
  My daughter usually has AOL running all the time and listens to music on some my space pages - if that could have anything to do with it.  Does ashwebSV.exe release the memory it uses if we exit AOL and Seamonkey?  My daughter has been restarting the computer more frequently and I was wondering if ashwebSV could have anything to do with it.
  Thank you.
  Sincerely, Libra

[olddog]

Libra,

The indications I have are that closing the browser does not release the memory being used by the Web Shield, however when the Web Shield Service is shut down (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services/Avast! Web Scanner) the memory is released and the item no longer shows in Task Manager.

So each time the computer is shut down & then restarted it is a new game. Once the service is started it shows in Task Manager on my XP system as taking about 1700k. When the browser is opened the memory usage will fluctuate depending on what was last being scanned by the Web Sheild. It also seems to me that when the browser is closed the memory left showing is what ever was being used during the last Web shield scan before closing the browser.

If you left click on the "a" ball, click on the detail button if it is showing, then scroll through the shield icons in the left column until you get to Web Shield you should find it is set to Normal (the default). Now click on Customise, then the Web Scanning tab. By default it is set to scan all files, however if you then click on the Exceptions tab you will see the default MIME types that are exceptions to the "all files" rule.
Perhaps these exlude the Web Shield scanning some of the music your daughter is listing to, but I'm not sure of that. 

[john36]

Similar situation as the OP.

Avast Home 4.8.1229

Latest file version as of today.

Win XP MCE 05  SP3

Memory usage is in the 55000 to 65000 range. (ashwebSV.exe)

It was never even near that high before.

The only thing I recently downloaded that was big was SP3.

Any other ideas why memory usage has gone way up?

I get error messages saying windows is low on virtual memory and it says to increase virtual memory.  Do you think this avast increase in memory is causing these error messages?

Thanks

[Libra]

olddog,
  I appreciate your observations on how ashwebSv.exe works with the memory and that it doesn't release it.  I discovered that today also.
I'll try to keep an eye on it and see if it seems to be the music causing it.  Thanks again.
Sincerely, Libra

[mmaehre]

The last three days ashsv and ashwebsv has been hogging 60-80% of my PC's RAM at all times. I'm not downloading anything - at the moment I'm only surfing through avast.com for support on this matter. CPU usage is normal. Tried adjusting the settings to no avail. What's the deal?!

I'm using Mozilla Firefox. Never had this problem before.

[Lisandro]

Which is your avast version and build?
Which is your firewall?
Any other security program that could interfere?

[DavidR]

The last three days ashsv and ashwebsv has been hogging 60-80% of my PC's RAM at all times. I'm not downloading anything - at the moment I'm only surfing through avast.com for support on this matter. CPU usage is normal. Tried adjusting the settings to no avail. What's the deal?!

I'm using Mozilla Firefox. Never had this problem before.

What were you doing when this was happening ?
The activity is only there when it is scanning something, like P2P download in the background (which is using port 80) something you might not be aware of.

Try this tool to see what connections are running, TCPview, from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx.

[mmaehre]

Avast version and build: 4.8 Home Edition. All updates.
Firewall: Windows
Other security programs: None
P2P: None

Never had this problem before, then bam! My guess is there's a problem with the latest program update.

Current memory status:
ashWebSv.exe using 37120 kB
ashServ.exe using 19408 kB
Firefox using 12256 kB

Other processes are using only minor amounts of RAM. CPU usage is only at 9%, while RAM usage is 74%

[DavidR]

Sorry but then bam! doesn't help describe what you were doing.

If based on the above figures it is using 74% of RAM you can't have very much installed, how much RAM do you have ?

However, RAM is basically there to be used and actually controlled by windows, and when other applications need RAM it is allocated from that remaining and that isn't enough RAM is taken back from other processes by moving that data out to the pagefile. Windows recognises that processes, etc run faster from RAM than constantly paging out to the page file which is why memory isn't immediately released in case what is in memory might be needed by the application.

It also depends on where you get your figures from, Task Manager isn't the most accurate tool but it is a guide, there are also several different totals for memory and by all accounts the VM Size is a more accurate guide than the Mem Usage figure.

Scanning is a relatively intensive activity for both RAM and CPU, whilst the CPU% figure will go down after a scan but the memory may not go back down to start-up levels before doing any scanning and that is partly due to windows memory management.

See my figures I have had firefox open all day and been browsing regularly with multiple tabs open, see my signature for an idea of my system specs.

Did you check the connection tool TCPview to see if there is something else with a connection that might be scanned by the web shield.

[lukor]

Hi,

WebShield does release the memory used for the connections when the connection is closed (from both sides - that might mean closing the browsing). Not doing that would certainly mean there is a BUG in WebShield but I don't know about such suspicion now.  It consumes more memory when working and less memory when idle. Eating 30 or 40 megs is not something I would describe “bam!” or “it hit me again!”

Besides this it also releases its committed bytes back to page file on idle (when there are no connections for several minutes). Not that it would speed anything, help your system or do any good, actually it slows down the process, stresses your disk and make the next web page appear a little slower, but as you can see the value displayed in the "Mem Usage" column in task manager is pretty important for many of you.

Just for comparison I attach an image of my system with XP SP3 running for 22 days (no restarts, just hibernate) with only one tab in Internet Explorer opened as I am writing this message. You can see that IE and WebShield are on opposite sides of the process list (sorted by memory consumption) so I had to split the image in two.

Surely designing an application in a way that it needs as little memory as possible is a good way, but usually when choosing the appropriate algorithm or data structure for some task a developer have to decide between a fast and memory hungry option and between a slower but less memory demanding one. If things wouldn't be so distorted in this whole resource consumption war between users and developers, we might probably be smart and use as much memory as available at any time to speed things up and be more memory conservative (or the system should do that for us - and it actually kind of does) when other applications want memory. Still I thing every byte of memory that is „free“ during some excessive work means my OS is not doing its job properly.

So, please post here if you have a concern that the memory usage for webshield goes only up and never returns back. We might re-do some tests for memory leaks, but I am not aware of any code change that might affect how memory is used in WebShield during recent version updates.

Lukas

[YoKenny]

I believe Firefox uses more memory to make it faster.

[Sesame]

Firefox 3 has better memory management.  c.f. http://dotnetperls.com/Content/Browser-Memory.aspx  The final output depends on addons/extensions which are used on it, though.

[DavidR]

Even firefox 3 uses a lot of memory but it doesn't seem to have the problem of it getting so large as to cause problems as it did with FF2.x and earlier.

I have only been on-line for a little over 30 minutes (shortly after booting) and Mem Usage is 94,300K and VM Size is 82,996K with 9 tabs open (lots of add-ons ). So the web shield for me is small potatoes compared to several of my running applications, but with 2GB of RAM there is plenty to spare.