AvastSvc.exe boosts CPU load during a Malwarebytes scan

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I’m running Malwarebytes’ (mbam) real-time protection along with avast5 and no issues experienced. However, during a full on-demand scan of mbam, AvastSvc starts to heavily load CPU at certain point. I tried to reproduce the problem and found that this CPU boost of AvastSvc.exe was triggered when the mbam scan proceeded to the C:\WINDOWS$hf_mig$ directory, during which AvastSvc was triggered to scan the same folder and its CPU use went wild. Sometimes it is not that bad, but often its CPU loading is really crazy (see attachments please). So I wonder if avast will implement a new exclusion module for its process monitor that is able to ignore all file accesses of certain process, in particular, to ignore the mbam scanner when it walks through files?

2

I’m not surprised as for all the files MBAM opens for scanning, guess what a resident antivirus does ?

Yes, you have guessed it, it will hook the file and scan it as it is an on-access scanner.

So for running scans with third party security scanners you might want to pause/stop the file system shield. That would get rid of this duplication and also reduce the possibility of conflict if both lock horns trying to scan. Not to mention it will reduce over all scan time.

Thought this is somewhat impractical for resident applications and there is no ignore process function in the file system shield as far as I’m aware. I have SAS Pro resident and don’t see this problem with it resident.

3

Thank you. I actually did take that resort and pause the File System Shield during a MbAM scan. But as far as I know, a process monitoring exclusion function is far from impractical, because it is available in Avira. It makes the resident shield stop monitoring all file accessing behavior of certain process of your choice. This is ideal for so called ‘third-party’ scanner, as well as any other process that has a real-time monitoring function, like file/folder sync, continuous backup (online or not), HIPS, and in particular, the Comodo Time Machine service. That’s why I really hope avast will consider implementing this process exclusion function in addition to directory exclusion. So what do you think?