I noticed my PC’s RAM usage grows about 13% (on a 16GB drive) during scans, and all of that extra data appears to be my 700mb “paged memory” growing to 2.1gb throughout Avast full scans.
Is this normal, or should I be concerned? Avast never gives me this memory back, and it will continue to hover around 2gb throughout the day until I restart my PC.
Run the following command (either directly via Win+R, or open a command prompt and do it from there), substituting the actual folder where you downloaded the executable to, and where you want the output log be created <download_folder>\poolmon.exe /b /n <output_file>
Send us the output file (e.g. upload it to ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming or to any upload service of your choice… or maybe you can simply attach it to your post here, hopefully it’s not too big
First off, Chrome is telling me the file might be dangerous, which concerns me. Second, I’m not sure what “output_file” is supposed to be replaced with exactly.
Well the file is not digitally signed, for some reason, and it’s an executable file - that’s why Chrome complains I guess. You can install the whole Microsoft WDK, as mentioned and linked here, if you want to be sure. (But it’s a huge package and you need only this one tiny tool.)
output_file is the target file where the list of pool allocations will be written to. So it can be something like
c:\Users[i][/i]\Documents\pool_list.txt
(or any other location you prefer)
I guess you can also run the tool without any command-line arguments, then press the “b” key (to sort the allocations by size), and then just post a screenshot of the window; the huge growth of memory you describe will probably be somewhere at the top, so it should be visible there (and the full list dumped to a file - that’s what the /n switch does - shouldn’t be needed).
Hi, it’s been three days since my response and I just want to be sure that my file was received, and perhaps get confirmation that this is actually an Avast issue and not some other program interfering with it.
This is a problem for ALL antivirus software, not just Avast.
Thankfully it stops around 2.1 GB, never surpasses 2.4, and will typically go down if I start playing a high-power game.
I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled Avast, now it seems to only go up to 1.5 GB.
Personally, my computer will be fine without those 2 extra gig of RAM.
I’m assuming this is normal and I’m just going to ignore it from now on. If you all find a fix, please don’t hesitate to tell me, but I don’t think it’s a problem. Sorry if I came off as rude, I’ve been sort of stressed about this whole thing.
Hi, sorry for the delay.
Unfortunately the poolmon log didn’t suggest the exact cause (i.e. a specific allocation Avast is performing). I’m told the allocations seem to be connected with “file objects”… that of course could be some kind of leak in Avast (though it that case it would most likely grow for ever), but also in any other driver on your system that filters file access.