Running free Avast anti virus 19.5.2378
No other security software running unless W8.1 is doing something I don’t know about.
I have been using Avast for free on this system for few years without any issues.
I recently had an issue with 100% disk usage tried a few things related to Windows (can’t remember what just something simple as suggested on a forum) and it went away but this problem appeared.
No new software installed recently.
I would like to point out that this issue is once again present. Pretty sure this started again with the new version, which I installed yesterday or the day before.
Today I noticed the “System” process in the Task Manager showing a constant 13% CPU usage, equally to full usage of one of the 8 cores.
Using the Process Explorer software, something called “aswHdsKe.sys” showed up as the culprit. Searching for the CPU usage issue with this process lead me here.
This process is using 1 out of 8 cores 100% of the time, unnecessarily wasting processing power and energy.
As there is no new version around to update to and hope to solve the issue that way, I am a bit unsure what to do. Last time I had to reinstall Avast was when I could not update the software for some reason, it was quite a hassle and I would prefer not having to go through that again. Especially since I am quite unsure as to whether that would fix the issue or not - considering it might be version related.
Is this a known issue, will reinstalling help or do I need to wait for a new version?
Details:
Windows 10 Pro (Version 1803)
Avast Free 19.8.2393 (Build 19.8.4793.541)
No other anti-virus software present