I’ve run into this problem twice in the past couple of weeks. While web browsing in Firefox, I will abruptly lose all web page connectivity - every new link I try to open results in a page titled “Loading…” that never displays any content. When this happens, the task manager informs me that AshWebSv.exe is using 40-70% of my CPU time (on a 3.2 GHz Core2Duo). I can’t end the process - it tells me access is denied - and restarting Firefox yields no improvement, so it seems the only way to fix the situation is by restarting my computer.
The first time this happened, I pretty much restarted my computer immediately and, upon noticing that internet connectivity was restored, thought nothing more of it. The second time, I was about to go to sleep for the night anyway, so I decided to leave it running as it was, thinking it might be doing some kind of scan I hadn’t heard of. When I came home from work the next day, I discovered that my C:\ drive had run out of free space. The culprit? An enormous AshWebSv.ws.ori file in Avast4\DATA\log\ that had (presumably) constantly been growing while I was away from the computer.
If I try to delete this file, I get the standard windows “Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use” error message. I’ve tried disabling the Avast web shield and restarting my computer, but it still refuses to be deleted, so I’m currently out 8 gigs of hard drive space.
I’m running Windows XP SP2, Firefox 2.0.0.15, and Avast 4.8. Any idea what might be causing this, and how I might get rid of this file?
Wow thats really a big file with 8 gig for only a file. There is a suggestion I can give but only use this if there are no other reply for you. Uninstall avast and then reinstall avast This is the suggestion I given.
I have the same problem and did like you said. After I disabled the self defense module I could stop process on the ashwebsv.exe. What can I do to stop this from happening again? Mod the avast4.ini file?
Right click the ‘a’ blue icon, Program Settings, Logging. Set the log maximum size.
Files generated automatically by avast (dumps) when it has a problem, crash, etc. can’t be controlled by the user, so their size is set by avast itself.
i have the same exact problem with AshWebSv.ws.ori, it was 8GB and it took awhile to figure out how to delete it, but after that it happened again and i think i know why. I think its because when i pause or stopped one or all of the Provider on avast! On-Access Scanner the AshWebSv.ws seems to grow crazy.