ashServ.exe memory usage

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
21

Not much will to fix this problem it seems…

I uninstalled Avast from the control panel and ran the avast! Uninstall Utility mentioned in #3 and then reinstalled it. It improved things quite a bit, now Avast is using “only” 276 MB of virtual memory compared to about 1GB before but it is still quite a lot.
Had to reboot 3 times in order to do it.

Maybe I’ll try the beta 5.0 when I have some time…

22

Same here… 400 MB of virtual memory, and 200 MB of ‘real’ ram. Way too much for me.
I’v sent the dump file to ftp, hope it helps.

Here is a screenshot:


http://pic.ipicture.ru/uploads/090828/7291/thumbs/zVUB1W8bJ3.png

Another thing i notice, on my last complete scan, avast was saying 99% for hours… and process shown as using 1GB of ram!
After quit scan, of course the process was gone, but some time later (few hours) i notice this ashServ eating my precious ram.

23

Your image shows a utorrent running and that will have a hit on ashServ.exe

  • the uTorrent option in the P2P shield is unchecked by design because of the way utorrent works.
This is by design. Basically, µTorrent scanning in avast is suboptimal and we decided to turn it off by default (this applies to both Normal and High sensitivity levels). To be more specific, if µTorrent scanning is on, and you're using uTorrent to download large files, ashServ.exe will hog your CPU. This is because uTorrent closes/reopens the target file after transmitting every chunk, forcing avast to keep rescanning it periodically.

So if you have enabled utorrent in the P2P Shield you will see this increase in the ashServ.exe, the main scanning engine of avast. If you have, then it would probably be better to uncheck the option in the P2P Shield and have utorrent have avast (ashQuick.exe) scan the completed download.

24

Any progress in fixing the problem?

I don’t have µTorrent and the problem is NOT about CPU.

25

Thanks for the explanation DavidR, had utorrent checked, now i’v unchecked.
However the ashServ.exe still using same amount of ram. :frowning:

26

Sorry other than what has been suggested no.

My answer as directly to R2-D2’s post and his was both memory and cpu.

27

Have you rebooted after that, though I don’t think it necessary, but the P2P application still being loaded may continue with the previous settings. You could also Stop the P2P Shield and then Start it again to reload it with the new settings.

28

Rebooting decreased significantly the used ram! :smiley: thanks.
I’v disabled the p2p shield. however ashServ is still using using 72 MB ram and 190 MB of virtual memory.

29

It is the web shield - disable option “enable web scanning” and it stops eating the memory.

I would appreciate it if someone can tell me -

  1. What does “web scanning” do and what can happen now that I disabled it ?
  2. Why is that affecting ashServ.exe and not ashWebsv.exe ?
  3. Is someone working on the dumps we supplied ?

I really cannot continue with this - having to boot twice a day.
Is anybody doing anything ???

30

Of course… you’re just disabling the scanning, without scanning, no resources are taken, but no protection is given.

The core engine is affected as the scanning is performed by ashServ.exe.

31

You didn’t really say anything.

Yes - something is disabled - but what ?
There are a lot of components scanning for different things, what EXACTLY is not protected now.

And you didn’t answer the most important question -
are you looking into it,
is somebody checking the dump ?

P.S. My system may not e protected but the browser is now incredibly fast. There is a HUGE difference in performance without the scanning.

32

That is the main scanning engine so it isn’t unusual to see it using RAM, why yours seems to be highish is beyond me as I don’t know what is going on with your system or exactly what you are doing at the time ?

Me just browsing it is around 49MB on VM Usage, but in the greater scheme of things this really is a drop in the ocean in terms of overall memory. RAM is there to be used and if it wasn’t used your system would be much slower.

So the more applications you have running the greater the ashServ.exe will have to be scanning, you also don’t say what the Sensitivity of the Standard Shield is as that too can have an impact (Normal is the default).

33

My take on it…

The only thing that changed after this update is the ridiculous amount of scanning messages it seemed to want to show me.

So it seems that it is holding these messages in memory somewhere.

As they come out, my memory usage goes up.

34

It doesn’t hold these (on-access ‘Show detailed info on performed actions’) messages somewhere in memory, they are live based on the file being scanned at the time and are disabled by default.

So if you wish to continue with this question, please start a New Topic of your own as this seems unrelated to the original subject (ashServ.exe memory usage) and will just confuse the topic and we will try to help.

  • Go to this link, http://forum.avast.com/index.php, scroll down to the avast! 4.x Home/Pro forum and click it, click the New Topic button at the top of the list and post there.
35

Nah… I decided to uninstall it and go with Avira for now…

36

German-user here…

Noticed the same issue with the “aschserv.exe” huge memory consumption,
direct after updating to new version (4.8.1351) it grows up to 900MB!!
(was afk for a while… noticed that when I came baq)

I can not repoduce this (900MB) but the “ashserv.exe” uses even more mem
than the previous avast version!! (Up to 150-200MB)

@ the moment I got ~70MB … and ~200MB virtual memory!!!

please fix this lag

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/4446/ashserv.png

EDIT

I just surfed around a bit … open few tabs in Firefox…Close Firefox
start ff again … and all these steps will raise the size of “ashserv.exe”…

now I’m @ ~100MB RAM usage and ~265 VM

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/3577/ashserv02.png

37

I’m in the same boat:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/59021/avast_memory.png

ashServ.exe isn’t showing in the memory dump app, even with self-defence disabled ):

38

Avast people won’t even say if they are working on the problem.
Nice service.

They don’t seem to get it - it is not something that we can live with. It slows the machine until a reboot is needed once or twice a day. This is unacceptable.

How many people need to complain before this is taken seriously ?

39

popish, right now avast 5 is being developed (specifically, we’re on beta phase).
The priority of the troubleshooting version 4 is not high IF they do not affect most of the users.

Check the folder \data\log
Are there any files called unpXXXX (where XXXX is a random number) or *.mdmp there?
If so, send them to vlk (at) avast.com
They may contain more information about the problem (maybe a link to this thread).

Vlk explains how to create a dump file here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=22636.msg187340#msg187340 and here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23283.msg193594#msg193594 :wink:

Create the dump of ashserv.exe (after you disable avast self-protection module) and send it for analysis.

40

@popish… temporaly workaround … so that you don’t have to
reboot your complete system … is to shutdown all
AVAST-Services and restart them…!!!

Go to SystemControl/Services … killing the process in taskmanager
will not work!!