avast! 4.6 home
windows xp pro sp2
sempron 2200+/256/abit nf7/samsung sp6003h (at udma5)
I noticed hard disk activity every second. Both the VRDB generator and the on-access scanner are disabled (I need only the traditional on-demand scans). Filemon shows constant reading of the same virus base block, as follows:
You may try to open the \data\avast4.ini file and in the [Common] section, change the item Database=ODBC to Database=XML. This could prevent the Microsoft Jet drivers from accessing the database… does it have any (positive) effect?
Anyway, I’m not sure about the effect in Morrowind. I mean, your HW configuration seems too good to believe that a 1 sec access to the filesystem cache (of course, the data is cached so the HDD shouldn’t really be hit) could influence the quality of the game play (or even increase the HDD temperature).
Maybe it’s something else that’s causing the problems (I’m not saying it’s not avast, just don’t want to believe that it’s the mdb file access)…
Thanks, it worked fine. Avast now only checks its ini file once in 40 seconds. My hard drive is happy.
By the way. Now I want more. Can I configure avast not to start any services at startup? I will run antivirus scan manually when I need it. 7 mb of ram do not lie on the road, you know.
256 ram is not too much for morrowind, even under 98. I think avast messed with kerio personal firewall in my case. Another soft prone to re-read its data for no obvious reason. Anyway, thanks to Tech problem is fixed now.
Sorry, I messed services and processes. I’ve reinstalled avast with no shields selected. Now I see ‘a’ icon in try with stop mark and all ‘provider’ lines in menu are gray. It’s okay, but ashserv and ashdisp are still running. Can I make them not to load on startup?
No, I think you’ve chosed the wrong way.
See, ashdisp.exe is the ‘a’ blue icon, nothing more. It won’t harm.
If ashserv.exe is the resident… If you did not install anyone ??? :
Please, install all the providers and disable them after… The behavior of avast will be normal and not this ‘crazy’ thing you’re seeing…
You can go to Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Services, and change “avast! Antivirus” service startup type from “Automatic” to “Manual”. This will prevent its loading on system startup (you can always start it manually from this applet).
To prevent loading of ashDisp.exe (the small app that handles the tray icon), you’d have to remove it’s reference from the Run key in the Registry.