ashServ2.exe Constantly Accessing Hard Drive ?

[gearedsteam]

After installing Avast Home 4.1,  I noticed my hard drive light would flicker about every
2 seconds and I could hear it being accessed.   So I went into Windows XP (SP1) task manager and turned on all the "I/O.." options on the "View" tab to see what was going on.

I found that "ashServ2.exe" is reading from the drive about 2K bytes every second.. even when the "A"vast ball in the taskbar is not rotating (indicating that it is scanning an active program).

The only other process that is reading the hard drive every second is LSASS.EXE but it is only reading 200 bytes per second.

Why is  "ashServ2.exe" reading 2K per second from the hard drive and is there a way to deactivate this and still maintain   "On-Access Protection Control".

My concern is Avast will cause premature drive failure with this continuous accessing of the drive.

Attached is a copy of my Task Manager screen with ashServ2.exe hi-lited.


Thanks in advance for any input any one may have...

Dave

http://www.gearedsteam.com/

[Lisandro]

ashServ2.exe is a part from the version 4.5 beta.
I think you're talking about ashServ.exe of the 4.1.
I had noticed CPU usage and not disk access... I can't know it two problems are related as yours CPU usage is null  

[RejZoR]

Disk access is because ashServ.exe is a On-Access module.

[gearedsteam]

To: Technical
Yes, it is ashServ.exe and not ashServ2.exe... my mistake


To: RejZoR

Yes, I know ashServ.exe is an On-Access module as I stated in so many words in my original post.  

The question is ... no program is being actively accessed... so why is ashServ.exe constantly reading the hard drive.   "On-access" is  indicated by the rotating "A"vast ball in the task bar.   My "A"vast ball is not rotating while  the ashServ.exe is contantly reading the drive.

Why is ashServ.exe constantly accessing the hard drive when no program is being accessed?   I expect it to read the hard drive when I fire up a program... but after the program has fully loaded and is idle.. I would not exepect it to be reading the hard drive.  

Thanks in advance,

Dave

http://www.gearedsteam.com/

[OisteinR]

Yes, both ashServ.exe and ashDisp reads from disk.

About 4 reads pr. second. Average of  5k/sec. because ashDisp reads big blocks.

ashServ has read 116.320.000 bytes the last 12 hours.



This can't be right....?

[igor]

What is the "scanned count" item for each resident provider?

[OisteinR]

What is the "scanned count" item for each resident provider?

In my case: 456 on Standard Shield, the rest = 0

[igor]

116320000 / 456 = 250kB per file... sounds OK to me.

[OisteinR]

116320000 / 456 = 250kB per file... sounds OK to me.

Some misunderstanding here...

Yes, that number looks ok, but.

Number of I/O reads increases with 4 every second
Number of I/O bytes read increases with ~5Kb every second.
No provider needs to run.

After a fresh boot,  I/O bytes read is about 15Mb, and thats ok, but increases with 5kb every second.
30 min. after boot,  I/O bytes read is ~25Mb
No other activity on is done in that 30 min.

That is ~18Mb every hour, and that still can't be right.....?  ....or?

[igor]

OK, I would say that the periodic I/O activity is caused by MS Jet drivers avast! is using. I'm afraid we can hardly do anything about it...
If you are using avast! 4 Home, you can switch the database type from ODBC to XML (e.g. by changing for the corresponding item in avast4.ini) and see if it helps.

[OisteinR]

OK, I would say that the periodic I/O activity is caused by MS Jet drivers avast! is using. I'm afraid we can hardly do anything about it...
If you are using avast! 4 Home, you can switch the database type from ODBC to XML (e.g. by changing for the corresponding item in avast4.ini) and see if it helps.

Yes, that helped, the disk activity stopped...,but I got an errormessage in the error log after reboot:
"During the parsing of C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\avast4.xml XML document, the following error occurred: C."

There is no .XML file in the data dir., but everything seems to work...

[gearedsteam]

Igor,

Changing from OCBC to XML worked!!!!  LIFE IS GOOD!
  Thank you  Igor !!!

Unlike OisteinR, I didn't get any errors on reboot.


OisteinR,
Thank you for your persistence with this and ultimately helping
me resolve this problem via Igor.    I hope you can ultimately
resolve your error.


Regards,
Dave

http://www.gearedsteam.com/