AvastSvc mem leak?

[Matthew356q2]

When it first starts, the VM size of avastSvc is ~15K.  But as time goes on it climbs higher and higher, up to at least 80K.  Not running a scan, no other programs open.  Is this normal?

[DavidR]

I don't think it is a memory leak as surely a memory leak is a bug that would present itself over all systems. If that were the case we would see the forums alive with such reports and I haven't seen that.

I have just done a screen capture of my actual avastSvc.exe use and mint has the same start point (but it is MB not KB) and it is going to have peeks as it is the control for all resident scanners and a number of other activities.

Are you sure that you have nothing running in the background, P2P download for instance ?

What other security based software do you have installed ?

[Matthew356q2]

Right, MB not KB, my bad.
No P2p or anything.  I also use zonealarm.

[DavidR]

When this VM size increases, what is the CPU % activity for avastSvc.exe ?

If that too is elevated then it is scanning something (the avast icon would also be rotating), check the individual shields and see what is showing activity.

How long does it take for this VM figure to drop ?
Having just checked my settings, they are almost the same as my image, if anything slightly less.

[Matthew356q2]

I've been watching it and it seems that the VM size goes up whenever I open a new webpage.  Closing a page, it may go down, but not necessarily all the way back down.

[DavidR]

As I said all the resident scanners come under the control of the main avastSvc.exe (avast service) so any scanning would raise the RAM used. RAM use up to a point is outside of the control of avast but the OS controlling memory use.

Generally I don't start chasing RAM use as after all that is why it is there to be used to give better system performance. Most people have more than enough RAM if you haven't got much RAM to start with (?) then increasing RAM would improve overall system performance.