After upgrading to 4.5, I have been having issues the my CPU usage hitting 100% wheil downloading mail. My computer is virtualy useless while checking for mail. Its the avast thats using up all the CPU power. Anyone had this problem before? The mail seems to download much slower now as well. MY mail server is on my LAN, so I know thats not the problem. I am running a celeron 1.1 Ghz, 512MB RAM, Windows XP SP2. My mailer is thunderbird 0.9. Anyone have any ideas?
Steve Sills
steve@platnum.com
Try “playing” with the mail scanner settings and let us know if something is changing with another setting.
I have played with all settings, the only one that seems to make a difference, is turning off the e-mail scanning. Then it checks, downloads, and sends my mail in a split second. Everything seems to be qute slow when its turned on. Even sending e-mail is much slower.
Please apply this patch and see if it helps.
BTW are you using a firewall? If so, which one?
Thx.
Vlk
Nope no firewall, I am behind a bridging firewall, as is the mail server. I am on the same LAN as the mail server.
Are you saying that the email eventually arrives but it just takes long time? Or doesn’t come at all?
Also, can you find out which process is taking up the CPU? Use the Process tab in the Task Manager.
Thanks
Vlk
It is the ashServ process that seems to take up all the CPU power. I have noticed the priority is set to High. Is this normal. tried moving it to normal, and It wont let me. Any ideas.
Steve
That’s normal.
BTW does this happen even for small emails? Are there any archives in the emails?
Yeh it seems to happen for all e-mails. After applying the patch in an earlier post, it seems to have sped things up. I will wait for a while, so I get a few emails in my box, and try it again.
OK the patch didn’t seem to help at all. My computer is still basicly useless while downloading mail, and the download is very slow. I have seen the ashServ.exe hit 99%. Even when messages without attachments are downloaded, its still quite slow.
Steve
Vlk, I had the same problem:
=> cpu hits 100% very often (not only when checking mail)
=> cause = ashServ process, avast 4.5.523
=> athlon 1 GHz / 640 Mo / XP SP2
=> no firewall but Prevx Home 2.2.0.2
Your patch did help (http://www2.asw.cz/~vlk/aswtdi.zip) and the cpu is now better
No, the patch didn’t actually help. It wouldn’t let me send out mail, the connection timed out. I have since uninstalled Avast. Since the new version came out, I have had nothing but problems
Steve Sills
A new version is sheduled for release later today. That one should solve your problems.
Do you have a hardware firewall? If not u should have a firewall running to protect your from hackers and some worms, Zonealarm is a good one, www.zonelabs.com and last time I checked Prevex wasnt a proper firewall, or is it now? sorry this is off topic but I felt I should ask :-[ 
No firewall at all, but:
I monitor the running process
I check with commandondemand every week (good complement of Avast, especially for dangerous java files or trojans)
http://www.commandondemand.com/eval/cod/index.cfm
my IP change every day
1] And you know what all processes are? I don’t so. Besides if you see a harmfull process it is already on your system while it should be stopped before it gets there.
2] It only scans for viruses, not other malware. I suggest you also get and use Ad-Aware and Spybot s&d
3] Worms don’t care about that. Many of them generate tons of random IP’s, check if they excist and than try to infect those systems.
I stronlgy suggest you install a software firewall, or get a router with build in hardware firewall.
I agree with Eddy on this one some good software firewalls are
Zonealram
Sygate
Outpost