On a windows xp sp1 machine running avast rc-2a I had a user running into a problem where when he would log in aswserv.exe would go cpu bound and come very close to hanging the machine. When I logged in as administrator I brought up control panel to remove avast. I noticed that aswserv.exe went 99% cpu and just stayed there. I rebooted and turned on detailed info for the resident shield scanner. I then went back into the control panel/add remove programs and noticed that aswserv once again hung after it reported scanning spysweeper.exe. I then uninstalled the spysweeper program and the spybot program (as it was the next one after spysweeper) . After that I had no problem bringing up the add remove programs wizard nor does the machine hang when the user logs in. It appears that aswserv.exe has a problem scanning spysweeper.exe or spybot. I have not reinstalled these programs on the user’s machine to verify this but if you want to set up a test case at your place I would be willing to help identify the pieces needed to do so.
It appears that my initial guess was wrong after removing spysweeper and spybot yesterday this morning the aswserv.exe process went cpu bound. What can I do to troubleshoot this problem? :-[
Well… the only reliable way I see is to create a dump file with the aid of a debugger. It would take you 15-30 minutes though :-\
Here are the instructions for installing and using the debugger: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=1040;start=msg5657#msg5657 . The procedure should be identical as the one described in that thread - with one exception - you wouldn’t be debugging ashSimpl.exe but (obviously) aswServ.exe instead.
All I need is the dump file.
If you don’t feel you can do it - just don’t worry about that, hopefully we’ll find another solution.
BTW it would be a good idea to turn off the Standard Shield provider before attaching the debugger to aswServ.exe - otherwise, the system may hang badly…
Thanks a lot
Vlk