a-squared Anti-Malware 4.0.0.50 Released

Fresh out of beta for those that are interested: http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/antimalware/

 

Looks great! Ikarus' excellent detection, A-Squared anti malware and mamutu! It would be a full feature internet security suite if it had a firewall...Gotta try this out..

 

Is the a2service.exe memory usage/leak issue fixed? Have two unused licenses here b/c of the issue.

 

I have a license and having giving the beta a spin. Really like the program, its light and provides good protection.
Only issue is with FPs, but they solve them in a jiffy. So no problems there too. The only undoing for this program may be its price tag.

 

It is a lot cheaper then most anti-viruses and it includes antimalware + an IDS. So the price tag is very reasonable.

 

Also considering that the IDS is one of the most powerful ones.

 

Sorry, my reference was to their 3 user pack. I think its a bit too expensive for me.

 

psss, the hips engine does NOT work on 64 bits

 

We're still working on an x64 version of the Malware-IDS.

 

Judge for yourself....

 

Well, you should enable the "Peek Mem Usage" column. Anyway, to describe my issue better, a2service.exe ate almost half gig of RAM on scheduled scans and never gave it back. Managed to find a screenshot, see below...

 

christian, how about fixing that fp i send in 3 weeks ago and wich i opened a ticket for 2 weeks ago? This is not a jiffy as has been always my experience with a2 in the far past.

 

@doktornotor: While the mem usage was so high, did it scan large archive files?

GES/POR: Could you please send the file again to fp@emsisoft.com? I'm afraid the file was lost in beta stress, sorry.

 

I'm complaining primarily about huge memory leak (note the "never gave the RAM back" part), not about memory usage (though yeah, that definitely could be better as well)... It kept eating that half gig of RAM even hours after the scan finished.

 

There is something wrong with your installation.

Usually, the a2servic.exe process does all the work, not a2scan. But I can't see any process with this name on your screenshot. That means, the service is not running.

Please restart your PC and scan again. Let me know if a2scan.exe still has this memory leak.

 

I posted a wrong screenshot. Yeah, the one attached in previous post is with a2service intentionally disabled and documents the suboptimal memory usage. The next one documents the a2service.exe memory leak. I disabled a2service.exe specifically because of the memory leak issue, since I was told it's not needed in single-user environment anyway.

 

That's definitely wrong. We said that the service was created to support non-admin environments, and that the software CAN be used without a running service to scan the PC if windows is booted in safe mode. But you should never try to stop the service while a2start.exe, a2scan.exe or a2guard.exe is running! This might crash your whole system.

I'd suggest to move this problem to the a-squared forum. We'd need some more detail information about your PC and a DebugView logfile to find out what's running wrong there.

 

@emsisoft
Good to see the the interest from Emsisoft! Could you please verify of the memory usage in my screenshot is normal for a idle a-Squared?

 

I didn't stop it. I completely disabled it in services manager so that it never starts. (BTW, just as a side note - crashing whole system is certainly not an acceptable action on stopping a service no matter what is running or not... )

I've already done this two months ago. Since it never went anywhere, I just uninstalled the product meanwhile.

 

Yes, around 80 MB is normal with the Guard running. Keep in mind, that a-squared loads 2 scan engines with a total of more than 2 million signatures.

 

Can you reproduce that problem on any other x64 machine?

We didn't spend a lot of time in x64 tests as it is not officially supported (the Malware-IDS does not work at all on x64). But I guess that's the reason of the mem leak. We're currently working on full x64 support.

 

Thanks for the information. I understand about the memory usage, the system impact itself is very low though and that's what count. Using the one year free license offer from last summer, and really liking it so far (skipped v3.5).

 

Yeah, reproducible for sure; I also suspect it's x64 related, the memory leak doesn't happen on 32bit Windows. The memory usage is another thing, if you scan lots of archives it grows quickly... but oh well, as long as the usage gets normal after the scan, not much of an issue.

 

What I noticed is the huge amount of FP's on a number of systems here. I reported them thru the internal "Send FP" option. I didn't had this many FP's before the Ikarus engine was added. If the FP's get tackeled it's a great product

 

Congratulations! on your Trully Anti-Malware solution:
AS (a-squared) +IDS (Mamutu) +AV (Ikarus).
Exceptional product!