Noticing something here which could be a problem, this is in the released version of 4.8 Home. The web shield seems to be using an increasing amount of ram as shown in task manager over time. It’s now up to 41mb ram usage just for that process alone. It was at 30mb or so after a day, now after 2 days it’s 41.
Running XP here, with IE7 loaded always and minimized. I do some browsing now and then, evenings etc, but not an excessive amount, pretty minimal really. It starts off around 6mb or so, but after a day or two winds up much higher.
Anything I can check here or do? I don’t really worry much about using ram in general, but perhaps this is not how it’s supposed to be? I seem to remember Avast Pro web shield releasing ram and staying pretty low when I tried it.
Comparing apples to oranges is not very interesting.
If we are going to post comparisons we should probably agree on the tool we use to measure. Process Explorer gives amazingly different information from Task Manager.
Perhaps the original poster can tell us where the numbers came from.
sure they are different - task manager tells what is in ram while process explorer tells the virtual ram size. you can see what the OP reported is task manager size. I updated my image above :-*
Thanks for posting that update it helps to set a benchmark - it would still be good to know what figure the original poster used.
If you care to choose the display of virtual memory size in Task Manager that still differs dramatically from the virtual memory size reported by Process Explorer.
Memory (of the human variety) is fickle too. I suppose if I want a real comparison I will have to go back to avast 4.7 and see if it differs from 4.8. I doubt that it does much - as far as I know there were no changes to the WebShield in 4.8.
The original poster mentions avast Pro - there is no difference in the WebShield between the Pro and Home editions of avast.
If you care to set columns in process explorer to working sets and private bytes you will find those values match task manager (mem usage/vm size it’s just a lille more detailed here
The memory usage figures for ashWebSv are very close to those posted above by 2007i.
That does not address the issue of whether, in a system running for several days, they might increase. However, I cannot see any difference between avast 4.7 and 4.8 here.
Sorry for the delay in posting back… Well, I don’t see what difference it makes how you measure it. A lot of ram is a lot of ram, what difference does a few mb matter? Task Manager default display shows it was at 41mb. That seems high. That’s why I mentioned it.
I come home from work today, and now it’s down at 30mb. So that’s interesting, haven’t used IE7 all day…
I’m not interested in analyzing it to death, just wanted to mention it in case it was an issue that needed attention by the Devs…
Btw, I’m on a brand spanking new fresh reformatted XP, less than 4 days old, so I see no other issues which would affect this.
In retrospect, I think I do remember this going on with older versions of Avast Home, just not to this degree. When I tried the Pro version, it always released ram and stayed down near 6mb when not actively browsing…
Anyhow, that’s it for me. Just mentioning for the record… It seems high…
In my installation of Avast 4.8.1178 the memory usage of web shield is 41 MB with peek of 71 MB. I have read in some place here that the memo info of taskmanager is not true or distorted, but hey, in my system and kerodo’s system the distortion was equal!
It won’t be a general problem but a specific ones… we will see a lot of users complaining and this does not seem the case… I’m using in three computers and don’t see a usage degradation.
I agree, performance for me is very good. I have yet to see any other web scanner as fast and efficient as Avast’s, so no complaints here. I only mentioned the ram usage as a possible something to investigate… But I have to say, even so, it’s a keeper for me, I am very happy with performance…
it’s just a lille more detailed here 
