Author Topic: SOLVED:Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity  (Read 95175 times)

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Yankee6

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SOLVED:Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« on: November 13, 2011, 04:37:26 PM »
SOLVED:I think I figured it out.  I went to manually scan something and when it was done the window showed that the screen saver scan was running even though my screen saver was off and asked if I wanted to stop it so I did.  I have since deselected that in my screen saver menu and so far that seems to have stopped all the activity on my hard drive.  Thanks for all who tried to help me.


I keep putting the drive offline because im wary of having it always active. Also when I put the drive back online the activity is at 0 but eventually goes back to 100%.  When I set the drive to offline a different drive goes to 100% and stays that way. I tried turning off the shields and it didnt change from 100%.  Cpu usage is very low i have a i-7 2600K.  In the Resource Manager next to the files being accesed most of them under image say Avastsvc.exe and PID 4 if that means anything.   Would love some feedback on what I can try to do to resolve this. Thanks
« Last Edit: November 25, 2011, 05:06:01 PM by Yankee6 »

iyogisolutions1

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2011, 04:43:54 PM »
Hi,

   Can you update us with the version of avast! and details about the O.S that you have in the computer.

Have a wonderful day. Good Karma! :)

ady4um

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2011, 04:46:53 PM »
If the CPU usage is very low, then what exactly do you mean with "100%"?

I ask because avastsvc.exe could be a different issue (independent) from the hard drive activity (if that is what you mean with "100%).

Yankee6

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Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2011, 07:04:51 PM »
Cpu activity is very low, but HARD DRIVE activity is 100%.  Avast I am using is 6.0.1289

ady4um

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2011, 08:07:24 PM »
Well, but Avast may or may not be the "problem". The OS itself may be "scanning" (not in the sense of the antivirus) the disk, for several reasons. Just to give you 1 of many examples, it may be some index for Windows search. There are many others, depending on the specific OS and other tools and features installed.

The question would be if this happens only when you "connect" the disk for the "first time after the last boot", or it keeps happening also after, say, 10 minutes, or if you disconnect it and re-connect it again after an hour without rebooting in between.

Yankee6

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2011, 08:34:42 PM »
How can it NOT be the problem when the resource manager shows that the task is Avastsvc.exe that is causing the activity on the disk?  It happens whether I reboot or not.  Its constantly scanning always the one hard drive and seems to be leaving the other ones alone because their activity is 0%.  If I put that drive offline then a different drives goes to 100% with Avastsvc.exe. 

ady4um

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2011, 08:57:54 PM »
If "anything" else is reading the disk (and there are MANY other things that can do it or trigger it) when you put it online, Avast may be scanning the files, according to the settings.

To be clear, I'm not saying avastsvc.exe is not showing you that HDD activity. I am just saying that what you see *may* well be a sypmtom, more than the cause.

Currently, I don't know (or can't think) of a method to test what exactly is causing the HDD activity. Maybe someone else have some concrete input about this.

iyogisolutions1

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #7 on: November 13, 2011, 09:19:28 PM »
Hi,

   Did you schedule any scan in avast!? If there are please delete them,test and report  back.

Have a wonderful day. Good Karma! :)

Yankee6

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #8 on: November 13, 2011, 09:51:56 PM »
no there are no scans scheduled.  Doesnt Process monitor from sysinternals do it?  It also says avast.

FlyingRobot

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Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2011, 04:17:48 AM »
Did you say what OS you are using?  Yes, Process Monitor would be a tool you could use to investigate filesystem activity (and other types of activity if those aren't disabled... make sure to check and set the filters).

I typically disable background and scheduled tasks such as malware scans, backups, disk defragmenting, search indexing, etc and minimize the processes/services started up and running in the idle state.  So especially if my network connection is disabled and nothing can be updating in the background, unusual/heavy disk activity stands out and is easy to spot via Procmon.  Depending on what you have running (in the background), more frequent and heavy disk activity might be normal (at times).

Give Procmon a try.  Look at what is performing filesystem operations and what those operations are.  What directories/files are being accessed?  There will probably be at least some activity you don't understand, but try to mentally or actually filter that out and zero in on the activity in question.  You can also play around with configuration settings in order to try to figure out what software and feature causes certain types of disk activity. 

Yankee6

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2011, 04:47:45 AM »
using Win 7 and I did check process monitor and its easy to see what the activity is from.  They all say Avastsvc.exe.  On the same file in Process Monitor this is what Avastsvc exe does; It starts with Query Name Information File, Set Basic Information File, Query Standard Information File, Query Stream Information File, File System Control, Close File. Other files it just says Read File. 

FlyingRobot

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2011, 06:37:32 AM »
I saw that screencap elsewhere.  It looks as though avast is interested in something within an inactive/old copy of your Windows directory, but the Path is blurry/clipped and I'm not sure what that is.  Is it just one file?  What's the name of it?

I see avast scanning some other files but their paths are clipped too.  Given visible bits of the paths and given that filetransfer program that is running, I wonder if avast is scanning some files that are being transferred.

The busier your system is, the more difficult it may be to zero in on genuinely strange behavior.  Double check screencaps for sensitive info and black that out before attaching them.

Offline igor

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Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2011, 11:53:56 AM »
The thing is that avast! shouldn't scan the files just by itself (well, unless you schedule an on-demand scan). So yes, the scanning is done by avast!, but there should be something that triggers the on-access scan (some other process touching the files). That might be this system (PID 4) process...

Yankee6

  • Guest
Re: Avast keeping one of my drives always at 100% activity
« Reply #13 on: November 24, 2011, 06:18:41 AM »
I think I MAY have figured it out.  I went to manually scan something and when it was done the window showed that the screen saver scan was running even though my screen saver was off.  I have since deselected that in my screen saver menu and so far that seems to have stopped the activity.