I was noticing that my computer was a little sluggish, and looked at my Task Manager to see if anything was hogging the CPU or if I was running out of RAM and hitting the swap. Then I saw the aswidsagenta.exe process using 822 MB of RAM. I almost had a heart attack! What the heck is this process doing that it is using so much memory?
I tend to keep my computer on for days (sometimes even weeks) at a time and just let it sleep when I am not using it instead of rebooting. Rarely had any issues over the years, but occasionally I find processes like aswidsagenta.exe or websites like outlook.com that just keep consuming more and more memory over time unless you shutdown the browser / reboot.
Any suggestions on what to do? Of course, I could reboot, but I wanted to highlight this to avast, as it’s probably some code that is causing a memory leak or not releasing memory periodically.
Firstly, please reply to Asyn’s request - all valuable (and important) info.
Now my 2 cents:
Aswidsagenta.exe is the Avast Behaviour Shield process. Your Task Manager screenshot also shows thinkorswim.exe using over twice as much memory as aswidsagenta.exe. This suggests a lot of activity and resource use, causing aswidsagenta.exe to have to work harder.
As for
I tend to keep my computer on for days (sometimes even weeks) at a time
it may be time to Read The Fine Manual for M$ operating systems.
caches fill up
page swapping occurs more regularly
databases used by Windoze (there are hundreds of them) need to be consolidated or compacted
background updates (to the OS or user-installed software) need to update files that are in use by the OS
the Journal needs to be flushed to disk and its memory reclaimed
etc., etc.
At a minimum in this case, please reboot (NOT restart or just logout) and re-evaluate the memory usage. By all means report back
Rant over! But the advice to reboot is not just an IT Guy’s get-out: it will keep your OS (and its resource use) in better shape, as well as improving interaction between processes running on the machine.
