What the h3ll is MSE doing?!

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It seems like every time my system bogs down and becomes unresponsive, Task Manager shows MsMpEng sucking up 50% of my CPU.
I am using Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus on my Pentium 4 PC running Windows XP Pro SP3. Occasionally my PC seems to stall. For example, right now I have run a file search, and have a “Search Results” window open with about 250 files listed. Every time I try to scroll the window (drag the scroll bar), my system just hangs for 15 – 30 seconds. I’ve found that when this happens, MsMpEng.exe process has sucked up 50% of my CPU cycles, and nothing else can run. What is MsMpEng doing, and why does it do it every time I try to scroll this window?

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You are likley seeing that MSE is scanning. Either a HDD or the searched file list. Go through the settings that you have for MSE and make some adjustments.

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The single core Pentium 4 is a tad bit ancient. You realy do need to tightly control what is going to be run and when.
I know some of you elderly folks think the Pentium 4 just came out not long ago, but it isn’t so, that’s dementia setting in.

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Old hardware plus old OS equals slow scans. Unfortunately you are seeing this phenomenon first hand.

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The other thing it could be doing is a virus signature update. Its quite common to find MSE using a lot of CPU resource at boot time to do the update. If you don’t have at least a gigabyte of memory on XP, You will find MSE doing a lot of paging to disk at boot time.

Jerry

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I was using an old Dell D600 (Pentium 4m) until this past fall, and had the same issues. You MUST control when MSE runs. Set it up to run at night, or during your lunch, or whatever.

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If the issue occurs when MSE is not scanning your system, I’d suggest uninstalling/reinstalling MSE, or trying a different A/V. I’ve seen MSE create slowdowns like this, fixed them with a re-install. And make sure there are no other A/V’s or other programs that have resident scanners.

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Also, do you have enough working RAM? Lack of RAM can cause slowdowns. And MSE is a memory hog. To find out how much you are using, which is very easy, just run Task Manager (either Ctrl-Alt-Del, or Ctrl-Shift-Esc, or Start – Run – taskmgr)

Under the Performance tab, check two figures: Physical Memory Total (top right) amd Commit Charge Total (lower left).

The Physical needs to exceed the Commit by a reasonable working margin. If you can post your figures here, I’m sure someone will be able to comment.

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