MS Security Essentials slows down PC

[penfold]

My Wifes windows 7 laptop is experiencing problems which has been going on for some time. It originally started with any video file being played over the internet being slow and then completely unwatchable. I managed to take a quick look and updated some flash settings and switched to FF from IE which I originally thought solved the problem. To be fair she has been moaning about it for a while but I've never been able to take a look (she wouldn't let it go for enough time for me to look at).

 

Anyway, last night I managed to spot an issue which seems to be related to MS Security Essentials as whenever I was trying to browse the internet there is always a delay in displaying the content (most noticeably with any moving content) and there was a spike in the CPU which has being taken by MSE. I removed it and sure enough browsing speed was much better but I've never experienced an issue with MSE before. Laptop is an Acer Aspire One and 2GB memory in and looking at the task manager there is not a lot which looks like it is slowing it down. I've run a full AV scan & malwarebytes against it but it comes back clean.

 

I've checked for updated drivers and there are non but I'll be taking another look this weekend. My last thought was that I would take a look at a different AV but can anyone provide some suggestions of things I may have missed?

[abillybob]

There are known viruses that use mse processes to slow down your computer. This could be a cause? I'd install a fresh OS on it download all the latest drivers and install mse back on you'll probably find it will speed up! mse isn't foolproof it's a good anti virus but not the best (it won't pick up everything) personally I don't put an antivirus on my machines - I'll probably get slated for this. Just because most anti-virus software has it's flaws and if you know what you're doing on the internet you're very unlikely to ever get one I haven't installed one for the last 4 years and have never had a virus!

[difinity]

Malwarebytes run in safe mode ? MSE is pretty rubbish at stopping stuff, and useless at finding stuff once it's on a PC.

[penfold]

Well I would have thought that it was a virus except for the fact that the machine was quicker when MSE was removed. To me this sounds like an issue with MSE config rather than a virus.

 

Running without an AV is not an option as I don't trust her not to click on things she shouldn't - she doesn't care about how things work, she just wants them to work.

[yugo]

I'm assuming you checked that no other antivirus program is installed. Maybe the laptop is overheating and thats causing the sluggishness.

I use avast on my machines now and usually google chrome for browsing.

[difinity]

I've also seen high MSE cpu usage when it's wrestling with a virus/malware. Edited February 7, 2014 by difinity

[penfold]

The cpu usage only seemed to be very brief and in particular to trying to watch videos. I'll have to look closer tonight but Task Manager only showed high CPU very briefly and then dropped, but this is enough to cause the playback to stutter.

[teejay]

In the configuration of MSE you can set the max cpu usage, if you drop that down it should solve the problem.

[penfold]

I found the setting for when the scan is running and I changed that to 50% but it didn't seem to make any difference. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[teejay]

I think you might need to restart MSE or restart the machine.

[Bradlys]

Malwarebytes run in safe mode ? MSE is pretty rubbish at stopping stuff, and useless at finding stuff once it's on a PC.

 

I've lived by MSE,then again, I've always set it up from scratch... right at the beginning of an OS installation though

[3s-gtech]

Which model of Aspire One is it? The early Atom models will bog down running Windows 7, AV and a modern browser, simply because they're not very powerful. Later AMD models shouldn't be as affected.

[penfold]

I think there may be an issue with video codecs as it seems to stutter playing lots of different videos. I tried running it with VLC but it still had issues. The laptop never had these issues before so I don't think it an issue with it not being powerful enough. I did rebuild it once but from what the wife says, she can play videos from you tube but there is a delay when navigating website and playing videos from there. I checked out Flash and it does hog the CPU but a fresh install of both MSE and Flash didn't seem to sort the problem well not entirely anyway.

[gshaw]

Replace MSE with something else, detection rates fallen through the floor over the last year or so as MS seem to have lost interest in it. I've gone back to AVG, seems like they've sorted themselves out after some horrible releases a couple of years back.

[Tesla]

For what it's worth, i'm a fan of the Avast Free protection atm..

[penfold]

Replace MSE with something else, detection rates fallen through the floor over the last year or so as MS seem to have lost interest in it. I've gone back to AVG, seems like they've sorted themselves out after some horrible releases a couple of years back.

 

Think I'll try this as I moved from AVG to MSE a few years back as it seemed to work without hogging the machine. Was going to try the AV from work but I'll give AVG a go first.

 

Cheers