AshServ.exe High Priority

Is there a way to start AshServ.exe in normal priority? It severely slows down startup and while opening programs. I have a low amount of RAM for my processor speed (128 MB on 2.4 GHz Pentium 4) and I need to lower the priority of this process to speed up my system. I love Avast! and don’t want to get rid of it because it takes up too much RAM. I have a very clean startup, I definitely have no viruses or trojans slowing my system down.

Lowering the priority of that process would actually slow things down. This is because this process is scanning files as they’re accessed, synchronously.

It might be a better idea to limit the number of programs you scan, e.g. exclude some of your folders from on-access scanning. Also, aren’t you running stuff like the MS Office FastFind? Because this program accesses all files on your disk, triggering (unnecessary) heavy scans by avast…

I’ve been trying to exclude more and more things from the list, but it seems as I remove them it adds more! Is there a specific file that the exclude list for on-access scanning is located so I don’t have to enter them one by one in the UI?

What is your “Scan Count” value of the Standard Shield provider after a clean boot?

It’s around 184 files. Now I have a different error. This just keeps getting worse. I can’t even start Avast now. Here are the entries in error.log:

6/25/2004 2:08:59 AM 1088147339 DC62HZ11[i]user[/i] 948 Error in aswChestC: chestOpenList Error 1753.
6/25/2004 2:08:59 AM 1088147339 DC62HZ11[i]user[/i] 948 aswChestInterface - Program error description: CChestListView::LoadFiles() chestOpenList() failed: 2147422219.
6/25/2004 2:09:12 AM 1088147352 DC62HZ11[i]user[/i] 948 aswChestInterface - Program error description: CChestListView::OnCreate() !m_strErrorWnd.IsEmpty().

If that doesn’t really tell you the error, it says it can’t execute the chest files (?). This means I can’t even start AshServ.exe. What good does Avast do with no on-access scanning? It says it’s an error with RPC. RPC is running fine. 3 Entries used to be in the System Files tab in the Chest. They’re not there now. They were kernel32.dll, winsock.dll, and wsock32.dll. Help, please.

  1. What is your OS?

  2. Is the “avast antivirus” service running? If not, is it possible to start it? If not, what error messages do you get?

(Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Services)

I’m running Windows XP Home with SP1. When I try to start the service, it gives me this error:

"Could not start the avast! Antivirus service on Local Computer.

Error 123: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

Do you know what might be causing this? In Task Manager, AshDisp.exe and AshUpdSv.exe are up and running.