Avast process ashWebSv.exe using a lot of RAM!

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

This has never happened before but 2-3 days ago, I totally uninstalled Avast and re-installed the latest Home version.

I also registered it for the first time - I’ve never registered an Avast product before. I didn’t know why it kept expiring. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, a couple of days ago, my computer was getting really slow (I’m talking about a 3.2 ghz with 1.5 gigs of RAM here) so I decided to see what processes were running. Well, one of the avast processes was using over 500,000KB of RAM! I terminated it and everything seemed to be fine after that.

Today, it happened again so I looked - 200,000 KB of RAM! Terminated.

Now I want to know if there’s a fix for this? A registry fix or something? I’m pretty well versed when it comes to PCs so I can give you more information if you need it or whatever.

2

Is Avast scanning at that time?
Are you downloading when this happens?
What are the settings in Avast?
What OS?
What other security (related) software do you have installed?
etc etc.

We can’t give proper help without knowing details :wink:

3

Which provider is using the RAm and what is its CPU load?

Mine shows no such memory load.

4

No, avast was not scanning - except for the ‘resident protection’.
No, I wasn’t downloading but was browsing a ton - I’m a “power user”.
Avast is on default settings.
Windows XP Home SP2.
Spybot’s TeaTimer extension is the only one that runs in the background. I also have Ad Aware SE, Registry Mechanic and Spybot Search & Destroy. I think that’s all.

ashWebSv was the process. CPU load was negligible, it’s just the RAM load that was excessive.

Thanks in advance and if you need more info, post back.

5

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b247/zeroality/ramusage.png

It’s still doing it. :frowning:

6

What are your settings for the webshield provider?

7

Default. The only setting I’ve ever changed in Avast is to disable logging.

8

Did you click on the spinning “a” icon couple times? What programs were you running before you recieved this high RAM usage?

9

Zero, this is really interresting.

Could you create a memory dump for this process and upload it to our anonymous ftp server at ftp://ftp.asw.cz/incommng.

To create the dump, download and run this: www2.asw.cz/~rypacek/userdump.exe

It is executed as follows:

userdump ashwebsv.exe

The dumpfile will be created in current directory with the name ashwebsv.dmp.

Thanks.
Lukas.

10

I would ask: were you downloading anything at the time you checked the memory usage?

11

Nope. All I did was restart my PC and there it was. No downloads at all.

Here’s the dump:

Jesus… it’s 170 megs. It’s gonna take me 4 hours to upload it. :smiley:

Will post back when it’s uploaded.

12

Zip it. It will compress pretty well.

13

You could try zipping the dump file up, try a program called 7zip as it gives good compression before you upload it.

Edit: I must improve my typing speed ;D

14

Yup,use 7-zip and select Maximal preset when compressing. This will make files way smaller ;D

15

Wow. Regular .zip reduced it to only 15 mb. Man, am I glad I re-checked this topic. :slight_smile:

http://www.pokerealm.net/zero/ashWebSv.zip

16

Avast 4.6.691, Home edition, sensitivity set high, on Win2k Pro;
ashWebSv.exe uses 13,234,176 Bytes (12.62 MB).

Avast does not have a noticeable slowing down effect on this 1.6 GHz computer.

If the memory usage keeps growing there most likely is a program running written in some C language that does not have a proper memory management.

17

If that’s the case, how would I go about finding out which program it is?

18

Thanks, downloaded without a problem. I’ll report any findings here.
Lukas.

19

Hard to find. The C programming languages require additional garbage collection instructions, otherwise the proces garbage piles up.
It is just a possibility, something else may be wrong.
I hope your uploaded file may contain the clue.

20

Hi Zeroality, the dump seems pretty normal :wink: Every thread is where it should be and I don’t know how to find more from it. It seems WebShield is doing this weird thing regularly on your PC. Could you collect some more info when it again eats too much memory?

  1. download and run TcpView from www.sysinternals.com and export the output from it

  2. enable logging in avast4.ini

[WebScanner]
EnableLogging=1

and post also the log file in \data\log\ashwebsv.log

  1. does the memory consuption returns to normal when you close all Internet Explorer windows?

  2. does it happens when you turn off “Enable Web Scanning” in the WebShield configuration page?

Thanks.
Lukas.