Continous I/O but no spinning ball.

[gprzybyl]

Running Avast build 4.5.173 VPS 0450-1 on a Windows 2000 Server SP3 I notice that on an otherwise idle server aswserv, aswdisp and avagent are continously incrementing their I/O count even though nothing else is.  The Avast Icon in the system also does not spin during these apparent continous I/O operations.  What I/O is avast doing according to task manager on such a continous basis?

[Vlk]

Usually, couple of things are going on:

1. the MS Jet drivers (that avast uses to access its storage (mdb file)) tempt to periodically access the mdb file

2. avast sometimes checks its ini file for changes

3. obvious things like VRDB generator, scheduled scan etc.


For 1. and 2., I don't really see how (even on a low end machine) this could considerably influence overall system performance.


Thanks
Vlk

[gprzybyl]

But I have enabled the detailed info on the standard shield and it doesn't show anything being done by avast while the I/O counts just keep going up.  So it's not a scan or vrdb right?  And if 1 and 2 are only intermittent then I would not expect the i/o counters to just continously climb.  They are doing it fast but they never stop.  Even after stopping all the providers they continue to increment.

[Vlk]

So it's not a scan or vrdb right?

Not necessarily. The on-access scanner message shows, indeed, files scanned by the on-access scanner.

VRDB has its own icon that is being animated during the generation. Scheduled scans have no tray icon.

And if 1 and 2 are only intermittent then I would not expect the i/o counters to just continously climb.

Intermittent but constant. I'd say the mdb file is accessed approximately once a second (go blame MS )

They are doing it fast but they never stop.

Fast? Shouldn't be more than a couple of reads per second.
And these are serviced from the cache anyway...

[margspens55]

Help!!!!  I've just joined this message board and very ignorant - can't find where to start a new message - so I'm jumping in here.
I just installed AVAST on a friend's PC - a tech.put SP2 on it -we're using XP - but the Spinning Ball icon that was in the system tray has GONE!!!   -its not hidden either - checked that.
I can't figure out how to get the scanner to show when emails are coming in -  Can someone please help me very simply??

[Eddy]

can't find where to start a new message

At the top of each forum there is a button called "new topic" except for the forums that are closed or that you are not allowed to start a new topic.

I just installed AVAST on a friend's PC - a tech.put SP2 on it -we're using XP - but the Spinning Ball icon that was in the system tray has GONE!!!  -its not hidden either - checked that.

If you just installed it there was no "spinning ball" to begin with since Avast wasn't installed

try a repair of Avast and see if it solve the problem.

I can't figure out how to get the scanner to show when emails are coming in

It only shows when checking email, and if there is just one mail or very small mails Avast is so fast you won't even notice it. You can check if the mail (or email) scanner is working with the eicar test file

And you mentioned that this is happening on a XP system, than why the heck are you posting in the server edition on this forum? XP isn't a server OS nor does it require a server edition of Avast.

[margspens55]

Thanks - we actually checked it on a large email - mine scans every email and I can see every scan - this does not appear to be scanning at all.

The icon was in the system tray on Saturday - Sunday SP2 was installed
Monday - NO icon in system tray
I have to go to another suburb to check on this so  will try the repair - has this happened cos of installing SP2???

[gprzybyl]

FYI - By changing the Database parameter under [Common] to be XML instead of ODBC I have eliminated the continous IO problem of aswserv.exe.  That proves that the reads were the mdb access which mostly were coming from cache I bet (as you stated).  So now the user will have admit it wasn't avast doing all the disk io after all.  Which is good as now I can hopefully remove the road block of purchasing avast company wide.  Thanks to tech for definition of the ini file which led me down this path.

[Vlk]

OK, but unfortunately the XML storage has some limitations, and one of them is that it is not supported by the avast NetClient (the client portion of ADNM). So, in order to use ADNM, you're left with the ODBC storage (so far). We have plans to replace ODBC (and XML) storage by a new one. The ODBC storage is causing many other problems anyway (and is not portable to other platforms which is a problem as well)...


Thanks
Vlk