Strange Problem...Help Please

First of all, I want to say that I am using Avast Professional 4.7, have been for several months now, and up until an hour ago, I was in love with it. About an hour ago, I began downloading a torrent using the Utorrent client. While Avast did not give me any error messages or virus warnings, my computer began running ridiculously slowly. My 1st instinct was to shut down Utorrent, thinking that the large upload amount I allow on my DSL, was causing my poor performance. The lag persisted. My 2nd assumption was that maybe a windows update was being downloaded, so I waited several minutes(well over 20), no windows updates. After investigating the source of the lag, In my processes tab, I noticed that AshServ.exe was the program that was using all of my system resources. My NEXT assumption was, maybe it was a large Avast update that was downloading, so I let it be for about 35 minutes. When I came back, the same problem persisted. Only when I manually shut down the AshServ.exe process did my comp begin running normally. If anyone has any clue what the problem might be, I would appreciate input.

I believe there have been similar occurances with avast and Utorrent, so perhaps a forum search for ‘Utorrent CPU’ without the quotes might reveal more information. This is just one of them http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=19207.0