[-dustin]

everytime my girlfriend starts up her computer, this "ashserv.exe" program kills her resources. if we ctrl+alt+del it, it won't come back and everything is normal. i've done some internet searching and it seems some trojans are disguised by the name "ashserv.exe", however all virus scans turn out negative.

any idea what's going on? she hasn't downloaded anything in a long time, and this is a recent issue.

 

[Tenchiro]

ashserv.exe is part of the Avast Anti-virus Suite, maybe it is just running a scheduled scan.

Although if you don't run Avast! you may have something going on.

 

[binary visions]

It's a part of Avast! anti-virus.

Have you tried letting it run for a while? It may be trying to perform updates or run an overdue scan. If it runs for more than a couple hours, though, you've got a problem.

edit: beaten by Tenchiro...

 

[binary visions]

By the way, finding out what processes are from what software is usually fairly easy. Just run a computer search for the file name - the directory it's in will often tell you what the program is. If it's in a generic directory (like windows\system\ or something), just punching the filename into Google will often return results as to what the program is and what it's doing.

 

[syadasti]

Yeah it probably has a scheduled scan that is failing to complete when you end the process so its retrying the scan every time you boot up. Check the scheduler in Avast.

Also they update it frequently - what version are you running?

 

[-dustin]

if i recall, we removed avast! from her computer quite a while ago. i'll have to go check......

sweet. all is good.