since a few weeks I have problems which I suspect are related to Avast. When I first started using Avast, several months ago, I regularly got the error 'concurrent connections limit in avast exceeded ’ in outlook express running under XP. By setting Maxconnections to 50 I managed to solve this problem.
Until a few weeks ago. The problem is back, and added to that, the computer has become very slow. If I look in task manager I see that the process ’ ashmaisv.exe’ is using close to 100% of CPU time, irrespective of whether Outlook Express is open or not.
If I disable this process, everything runs as smoothly and as fast as before, so I have the impression ’ ashmaisv.exe’ is the cause. Why it’s active all the time however, I don’ t know.
I’ve set maxconnections to 150 now, but that doesn;t seem to help.
As a first solution I’ve reinstalled Avast, and it worked fine for a week, then it went back to the same problem.
operating system : XP + SP2
avast 4.7 home ed. VPS 0666-1
Connection: ADSL, windows firewall
I normally use my computer only for browsing and limited home office use.
The problem seems to be there always, I have not been able to identify any action that triggers it. It could be related to having installed Skype a few weeks ago, but I think the problem was there before I installed Skype
I have run adaware (newly updated) to see if I had any trojans, but found nothing
Main problem: I am not able to get the screen you show. I have no idea where to enable what you suggest.
Click on the avast icon the window that pops-up is the avast on-access scanner one in my image if you don’t see the Installed Providers icons, click the Details button at the bottom of the window. Select the Internet Mail icon and click customize, not you will see the second window Resident Task Settings.
These spambot trojans are often difficult to detect as there is no harmful effect, ither than this clogging of system resources and sending spam.
Your firewall should be able to stop unauthorised outbound connections, unfortunately XP’s firewall provides no such protection.
Whilst the windows XP firewall is usually good at keeping your ports stealthed (hidden) it provides no outbound protection and you should consider a third party firewall.
Any malware that manages to get past your defences will have free reign to connect to the internet to either download more of the same, pass your personal data (sensitive or otherwise, user names, passwords, keylogger retrieved data, etc.) or open a backdoor to your computer, so outbound protection is essential.
I updated AdAware agent, and ran it again. It found 2 copies of something called WIN32.TROJAN.AGENT.
These were quarantined, and the problem is gone
Funny thing is that exactly the time that Adaware found these 2 while it was scanning the entire harddisk, Avast recognised them as well.
That makes me wonder how they ever got in, past Avast. It doesn’t make sense: Either Avast knows them, in which case they should never have gotten in, or it doesn’t know them, but how can it then ‘see’ them at exactly the same moment that Adaware finds them.
I’ll try to upgrade my firewall, thanks for the advice.
Which is your sensitivity level of avast? High or Normal?
Are new opened/created/modified files scanned?
If so, when Adware ‘opened’ the file to scan, avast caught them!
It entirely depends on the file name and location where they were found, the file could have been opened by AdAware and then detected by avast. Another consideration, that this was only recently added to the avast signatures.
Yet another as avast is a specialist anti-virus program it does however, detect a lot of spyware which trojans are likely to be. This is a very good reason for using a multi-application approach to security. AdAware you have avast you have, your going to upgrade your firewall so you should add one of the specialist anti-spyware tools like, Ewido, a.k.a. avg anti-spyware If using winXP. or a-Squared free if using win98/ME.
