Microsoft Security Essentials - complaint

[bobross419]

Based on what? You haven't uninstalled it to verify this is the case yet. As others have noted, this behaviour is also typical of Vista's desktop search indexing.

Seriously... Its very frustrating trying to help someone when they won't listen to basic instructions that will help pinpoint the issue. CRXican, until you actually test it out by uninstalling and seeing if you still experience the same behavior, stop wasting everyone's time. If it stays with the program, then maybe we can help you pinpoint why it is happening... basic troubleshooting steps - start broad and work your way down until you determine the exact source of the error. Seems you have skipped the first 2 or 3 levels and jumped right on MSE.

 

[mb]

Whatever you do man, don't uninstall it to see if that's the actual problem! Just keep on using it and complaining about it.

 

[coolVariable]

System

C: \System Volume Information

and

svchost.exe(LocalSystemNetworkREstricted)

both are going insane, I know it's MSE, looks like it's scanning everything on my C drive

Not according to that pic.

... and if MSE actually wants to scen your drive (and based on your behavior) ... I wouldn't be surprised if you have a nasty virus.

 

[Saga]

All these posts and nobody has made the simple suggestion that the problem is Vista?

Disappointed.

 

[zen_68]

This is a legitimate problem. I've had 4 computers experience the same symptoms. Some are XP, some Vista. So far all I have to go on is, severe computer lag with high disk activity. Im certain it is MSE related.

 

[corkyg]

I set my quick scans to be done at 0400. That way I am oblivious to what it does. I do full scans about once a month - at a time of my choosing. They take about 2-3 hours. Then I do something else - go shopping, eat out, what ever. I never let scans interfere with my life or bug me.

 

[IronWing]

Learn me about MSE. I've been using McAfee Security Suite for years. My new PC running Win 7 Home Premium will ship with MSE pre-installed. Does MSE replace the firewall and virus scan features of McAfee or do I still need something else? McAfee is pretty instrusive so if this is better, I'm ready to switch.

 

[owensdj]

IronWing, MSE replaces the virus scan features, but not the firewall. You can use the Windows built-in firewall.

 

[IronWing]

IronWing, MSE replaces the virus scan features, but not the firewall. You can use the Windows built-in firewall.

Thanks.

 

[jjsbasmt]

I too have installed MSE on dozens of systems and never had the issue the poster is referring to. As a matter of fact I have removed McAfee (talk about a resource hog) from some systems in favor of MSE since it has found and cleaned off trojans that McAfee has missed. I have 4 systems of my own, and have been using this on one of mine since it first came out, and along with the numerous others I have installled it on, I have no complaints and have the highest confidence with MSE.

 

[jorbuc]

I realize that it's bad form to dig up old threads, but I found this with a Google search and thought it seemed appropriate to add my two cents.

I come from the days of the Amiga 500 and 2000, when computers were painfully slow but we didn't know any better because there was nothing faster to experience. Even on that old, slow hardware, when a hard drive was read from at the same time it was written to, it would thrash so badly that you'd think it was going to tear itself apart. As a result, developers knew to keep such excessive accesses to a minimum.

Now, with faster and faster hardware, programmers think nothing of grinding hardware to such extremes, and Microsoft with their Security Essentials is no exception.

As an example, I've just finished downloading and installing the current version of Blender. It's a ~32MB .zip file which also contains a little over a thousand tiny python scripts. MSE initially did a virus check on the .zip file immediately after downloading it. The virus scan was a little slower than my previous antivirus software and it completely blocked any multitasking while the scan was in progress, but that's not as bad as it could've been, considering it's Microsoft's engineering in progress.

It's when I went to extract the .zip file that the thrashing, and Microsoft's ineptness, was audibly apparent. MSE was attempting to scan each of those thousand or so files, in addition to the core files, WHILE THE EXTRACTION WAS IN PROGRESS. After about five minutes of watching and listening to my drive struggle to keep up with MSE's demands, I mercifully hit cancel while the extraction was at just over 50% complete. Then I turned off MSE's real-time protection and restarted the extraction from scratch. Miracle of miracles! The whole thing took about 40 seconds without the train wreck that is MSE grinding away during the process.

As I'd stated earlier, reading from a drive while it is being written to, even with today's hardware, is such an enormous strain that it's probably one of the great wonders of technology that hard drives last as long as they do under Microsoft's OSs.

I'm careful enough with downloads and such to manually scan any files that may potentially contain malicious software, so my choice is to leave MSE installed and running, but with real-time protection disabled. I'll simply enjoy the "pretty" red icon and the red X on the notification flag with pride knowing that my hardware is much, much happier.

 

[zebrax2]

I've seen it do this with win xp.
For win vista and above though this is still my preferred antivirus

 

[mechBgon]

I realize that it's bad form to dig up old threads, but I found this with a Google search and thought it seemed appropriate to add my two cents.

I come from the days of the Amiga 500 and 2000, when computers were painfully slow but we didn't know any better because there was nothing faster to experience. Even on that old, slow hardware, when a hard drive was read from at the same time it was written to, it would thrash so badly that you'd think it was going to tear itself apart. As a result, developers knew to keep such excessive accesses to a minimum.

Now, with faster and faster hardware, programmers think nothing of grinding hardware to such extremes, and Microsoft with their Security Essentials is no exception.

As an example, I've just finished downloading and installing the current version of Blender. It's a ~32MB .zip file which also contains a little over a thousand tiny python scripts. MSE initially did a virus check on the .zip file immediately after downloading it. The virus scan was a little slower than my previous antivirus software and it completely blocked any multitasking while the scan was in progress, but that's not as bad as it could've been, considering it's Microsoft's engineering in progress.

It's when I went to extract the .zip file that the thrashing, and Microsoft's ineptness, was audibly apparent. MSE was attempting to scan each of those thousand or so files, in addition to the core files, WHILE THE EXTRACTION WAS IN PROGRESS.

That's its job. If it doesn't scan the files in real time, then you don't have real-time protection, which is the point of having antivirus software. If your system is bogging down due to the HDD activity, then extracting the files and scanning them afterwards is an alternative, but I'd predict the same overall scenario with any compotent antivirus that has all its options enabled.

I hear the rebuttal coming already: it scanned it once upon download, what's the point of re-scanning its components all over again? Well, I have a malware sample on my desktop screen right now in a zip file. When I downloaded it yesterday, it wasn't detected by MSE (VirusTotal detection rate 8/43). But if I open it a week later, the antivirus signatures will be newer, won't they? Yeah. Stuff that slipped through on initial download may be caught later. Today's VirusTotal detection rate of that file is 16/43 (and a good example of why not to place too much faith in antivirus protection).

As for the original topic, I think MSE sets up a one-time idle-time scan after initial installation, to recon the system for infection without making a big scene. Run Task Scheduler using the Run As Administrator option and look in the Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Microsoft Antimalware, right after installing MSE, and you may find it there.

 

[Albatross]

http://www.1stbyte.com/2010/02/01/microsoft-security-essentials-msmpeng-exe-using-high-cpu-time/
Try this.

 

[jorbuc]

That's its job. If it doesn't scan the files in real time, then you don't have real-time protection, which is the point of having antivirus software. If your system is bogging down due to the HDD activity, then extracting the files and scanning them afterwards is an alternative, but I'd predict the same overall scenario with any compotent antivirus that has all its options enabled.

I hear the rebuttal coming already: it scanned it once upon download, what's the point of re-scanning its components all over again? Well, I have a malware sample on my desktop screen right now in a zip file. When I downloaded it yesterday, it wasn't detected by MSE (VirusTotal detection rate 8/43). But if I open it a week later, the antivirus signatures will be newer, won't they? Yeah. Stuff that slipped through on initial download may be caught later. Today's VirusTotal detection rate of that file is 16/43 (and a good example of why not to place too much faith in antivirus protection).

Thanks for the reply.

Actually I'm glad that downloaded files are checked at download and again at extraction time. That's not where the inefficiency lies.

I've only recently installed MSE over my older antivirus software. I'm a heavy Blender junkie, and this Blender update is the first of any software I've worked with since installing MSE. My older antivirus never choked this badly on previous versions of Blender, either downloading or unpacking, and I keep Blender as up to date as possible with several updates being made available monthly.

I double-checked my laptop, which still has my older AV installed, and indeed the AV engine waited until the entire .zip was extracted before it began scanning, which really is the way it should be. MSE just needs to be made a little smarter when it comes to scanning during archive extraction, et. al.

 

[mzkhadir]

I have seen it on win 7 pro. UnInstalled it and went to mcafee vscan enterprise from work. which sometimes work and sometime uses too much cpu

 

[stevech]

No problems with MSE here.

 

[Rumjaku]

This is a legitimate problem. I've had 4 computers experience the same symptoms. Some are XP, some Vista. So far all I have to go on is, severe computer lag with high disk activity. Im certain it is MSE related.

Preface:
So I have had MSE installed for a few years now. It seemed all fine and perfect at first. Best anti-virus I've ever used.

Problem:
Now, all I see is MsMpEng.exe in my resource monitor constantly going through files on my hard drives that are harmless, making a crap load of disk thrashing. I cannot leave my PC idle to take a simple nap or read a book with all this constant commotion.

Solution?:
If I disable real-time scanning... nothing changes.
If I right click MsMpEng.exe and Suspend the process, SILENCE! AMAZING!
Resume process?! POOR hard drive thrashing away!

Do not tell me it is NOT Microsoft Security Essentials problem here. It is.

 

[sm625]

Kapersky was doing this on my machine. I had to kill it. It was repeatedly accessign some obscure dll buried in my system folder. There was no reason for it to be happening but it was. Verified it by using procmon. The next day the problem was gone. I really dislike A/v programs... the wear and lag they can cause probably outstrips the good they do in general. If left unchecked they will literally kill your hard drive if something goes wrong. And something tends to go wrong with them quite often. Not one of these A/V programs can even stop a simple sysguard infection. (Well, I havent had an eset-protected machine get infected by sysguard... yet! knock on wood!)

I swear I would not be surprised if I learned that all the major antivirus programs out there are all in some way directly or indirectly owned by the major HDD manufacturers!

 

[thestrangebrew1]

I've only been running MSE on 4 pcs for the last 2 years and I've never had any problems with it. All of my pcs are running Vista or w7 and not one problem or any thrashing that I'm aware of. Weird...

 

[jkroeder]

Personally, I don't even like the idea of using anti-virus. I just don't trust their effectiveness.

But I gave MSE a try anyway and while it's usually not very noticeable, there's some definite performance impact with it installed. With MSE installed, I regularly get pauses while extracting archives. Without it, the pauses are gone.

Not to mention, the latest av-comparitives report came out and out of 15 tested, MSE placed dead last in detection.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/detection-test

No false positives though.