avastsvc.exe at 99% cpu

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi boys and girls, I just joined to report what happened to me yesterday.
(I have searched the forum but didn’t find a match so I guess I’m just unlucky/cursed/…)

I have Avast Pro running under XP, upgraded from Avast Free about six weeks ago. It updates itself 2-3 times a day, how often this is the software and how often just the virus database I don’t know.

Wednesday morning I booted up and used the computer as normal.
Wednesday evening I got home, booted up, logged in and … nothing … it just hung. Dinner time so I quit (held the power button in).
Yesterday (Thursday) morning I booted up, logged in and … same …
I noticed the clock was still ticking over so the computer wasn’t dead.
I hit Ctrl/Alt/Del and waited … and waited … and after ten minutes Task Manager started up. It showed me avastsvc.exe was consuming 99% of CPU time.
To cut a long story, after SIX HOURS it was still the same. (I had hoped it was really scanning but decided I was being very stupid, nothing unusual there).

I was able to boot in safe mode and Google a few things, and found a suggestion I should update my Avast version. So I did that (using Add/Remove Programs, “Change” Avast, which ran avastsetup.exe and certainly did something).

After that, all OK, it’s a happy ending (though Avast did decide, after all this, my recently acquired licence had expired, but it saw sense in the end).
I just put this on here in case something like this ever happens to you.

Dave

2

Thanks for posting Dave, glad you fixed the problem :slight_smile:

“Note” you might want to go into your profile settings and hide your email :wink:

3

I suspect this was tied into that bad-defs situation, since I experienced the same thing on my wife’s computer (or my son did, trying to find the problem). One of avast’s processes was using 98-99 percent of CPU, preventing anything else (including most of avast itself, and the firewall) from loading properly. A clean uninstall (including the cleanup tool) and reinstall of avast plus the full defs installer cleaned up everything nicely, and everything’s now running normally and CPU is back to its usual 95+ idle.

Odd that I never had a problem on my own computer … while my router-modem’s active 24/7, I normally get up late and don’t boot up till midday, and it’s quite possible that my post-boot auto-update got the bad update and the “repaired” one at the same time.

4

Thanks guys (and thank you Craig for the hint).