I use the normal windows XP screen saver and not the “avast! antivirus” one. I noticed that my laptop harddrive starts working very fast when the screen saver starts. So I used filemon and tcpview to see what’s going on. Filemon shows that ASHMAISV.EXE is causing trouble but there’s no connection to outside made by it. It constantly opens and closes Avast4.ini file:
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 OPEN C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini SUCCESS Options: Open Access: All
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 LOCK C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini SUCCESS Excl: No Offset: 0 Length: -1
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 QUERY INFORMATION C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini SUCCESS Length: 8859
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 READ C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini SUCCESS Offset: 0 Length: 8859
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 UNLOCK C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini RANGE NOT LOCKED Offset: 0 Length: -1
1:12:53 PM ASHMAISV.EXE:2660 CLOSE C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Avast4.ini SUCCESS
But tcpview don’t show any connection being made.
Any ideas on what’s going on? This is so annoying because it causes my laptop cpu temperature to increase and the cpu fan starts working.
I have just run Filemon and the only ash* (the avast files generally begin with ash or asw) and the only activity is for ashServ.exe the main scanning engine and that too is to the avast4.ini file, however, even though this activity is there there is NO access to the HDD, my HDD activity LED isn’t blinking.
Personally I never use a screen saver, I prefer my system (desktop) just goes into standby, but I can’t understand why the ashMaiSv.exe would access the avast4.ini file when the screen saver runs, yes perhaps ashServ.exe but not ashMaiSv.exe.
Checking TCPview even when on-line ashMaiSv.exe has the 4 ports it monitors as listening on local host ports but no activity.
What version of avast are you using ?
What database method is being used (ODBC or XML), see Program Settings, Troubleshooting ?
if you are using the Home version and it is using ODBC, try changing to XML. I might be clutching at straws here but on occasion the MS jet drivers for the the ODBC have caused high disk activity.
That’s very strange. I changed the settings to XML but it didn’t changed anything. I’m using avast 4.6.763. I hope it’s not a virus sending emails from my machine.
Even when I changed my screen saver settings to start after 1minutes, again this thing is happing right after screen saver starts.
Did you boot after changing it?
Did you try to repair your avast installation through Control Panel?
Did you scan with antispywares? (ewido and a-squared)?
Did you run avast at boot time?
After a long time, just in case someone else runs into same situtation. For me it looked like the harddisk activity was because of windows trying to defrag harddrive when the PC was idle. This could be turned off by using Tweak UI.
