Avast checking same files on secondary drive every 15 minutes

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi all.

I noticed recently that my secondary hard drives on my PC keep spinning up randomly every 15 minutes, so i started looking into it.
I use Windows 10 and Avast is updated to version 21.1.2449 build 21.1.5968.639

I’ve tried all the basic stuff i could find, like checking if there’s page files on the drives which there aren’t, indexing is turned off on all of them, turned off Telemetry everywhere i possibly could, and it was still spinning up the drives.

So i used Process Monitor, from Sysinternals, to check to see any event/process that was accessing a file on those drives.

I seem to have found that the Avast “aswidsagent.exe” is checking the same group of files every 15 minutes with a “QueryOpen” operation for some reason. They’re executable for basic programs like FreeFileSync, CCleaner, Samsung Magician, etc, so i’m not sure why they’re being scanned specifically.

Is there anything i can do to check why Avast is checking these files every 15 minutes?

2

Hi simmerdownthere,

thank you for your report. We’ll fix it probably in the AV 21.3 version.

Regards,
PDI

3

Do you have any idea when 21.3 will be deployed if production is only at 21.1.xxxx now?

4

Since the current program version is at 21.1.x and 21.2.x is only in beta (hopefully to be released soon ?), then 21.3.x would be roughly a month or so behind that after its beta testing session.

You could probably get on the 21.3 beta as an when that is released and see.

5

Hi simmerdownthere,

the AV 21.3 is out. Can you please try if this update helps?

Thanks,
PDI