Anyone else seeing Microsoft Security Essentials slow startups SIGNIFICANTLY?

I have been a pretty strong supporter of MSE since it's release and have been impressed with its performance and virus catching capability so far, but in the last month or so I have seen a significant startup time degradation on at least two dozen computers.

I'm not talking a few seconds, but 20-30 seconds and significant CPU usage at startup (40-50) that lasts at least another 30-60 seconds after the desktop appears. During that 30-60 seconds, system performance in general is pretty poor (cursor unresponsiveness, program stumbles, etc).

I find that with Vista and Windows 7 the problem tends to be to the lesser time and with Windows XP it tends to the longer disruption.

In the grand scheme of things, a minute is not the end of the world, but this behavior was not present earlier in the product's live cycle.

Just curious if I am the only one seeing this

 

Haven't seen anything like that here, on 4 machines.

 

To be honest, on my lappy, it's as if MSE isn't even there. It's very light weight, and literally made for Windows 7. If you're having a problem, it's very unusual.

 

I don't use MSE for its memory use being greater than Avira for the same protection. The fact you see it on 2 dozen machines is a little mind-bobbling; good thing I stuck with Avira.

 

hmm...I haven't noticed any difference on my machines. MSE is still running great. Is it possible that it's something else that's the cause, maybe something not playing nice with MSE. I know during the beta, I had issues with MSE and DVDFab not playing nice together whereby simply launching DVDFab would cause MSE to crash and bring the system down with it, but that was fixed a long time ago.

 

I am not having this problem. Best bet is to uninstall and reinstall and see if that helps.

 

This is not my personal machine. I repair computers and have run into this a lot lately--but not on every machine. I have not seen it at all on Windows 7, but see it quite a bit on windows xp.

I know that MSE is supposed to disable Windows Defender, and I believe it shares the same engine. I suspect that the problem in XP is related to what I have seen lately and thought that was the issue.

In the past week, however, I have seen it on some Vista machines.

 

Ooo, well then that explains it....no one here see's this issue on Windows 7, but you're seeing it on machines running XP.

Must be a conflict of some kind to be taking so long to load, and yea, probably with defender or other system files. I didn't know they made MSE for XP, it was really made for 7.

 

System Requirements

• Operating System: Genuine Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3); Windows Vista (Gold, Service Pack 1, or Service Pack 2); Windows 7
  
• For Windows XP, a PC with a CPU clock speed of 500 MHz or higher, and 256 MB RAM or higher.
  
• For Windows Vista and Windows 7, a PC with a CPU clock speed of 1.0 GHz or higher, and 1 GB RAM or higher.
  
• VGA display of 800 × 600 or higher.
  
• 140 MB of available hard disk space.
  
• An Internet connection is required for installation and to download the latest virus and spyware definitions for Microsoft Security Essentials.
  
• Internet Browser: (Windows Internet Explorer 6.0 or later/Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or later.)
  
• Microsoft Security Essentials also supports Windows XP Mode in Windows 7. For more information, see the system requirements for Windows XP Mode in Windows 7
  

I thought it was only an XP issue as that is where I had seen it most. The last week I've been seeing it on Vista as well. I wish I had been paying closer attention to the earlier ones, but I know the two I saw this on today were both 32-bit Vista machines, both with 2gb of RAM. One was Vista Professional, the other other was Vista Home Premium (not that I think the "edition" matters.

Neither machine had been infected by a virus--I was looking at them for something else.

I can tell you that taking it off (and putting avira on) both improved start up performance

 

Sometimes svchost.exe (host process for Windows update - which auto updates MSE) eats up a lot of CPU after start up and this is normal.

 

It's not svchost.exe that I see running up the CPU usage (though I do see that will sometimes take between 5-15 percent), but msmpeng.exe.

 

"If MSMPENG.EXE is constantly consuming excessive memory and CPU, there is a conflict on your PC with another process or service. I would recommend disabling all startup items via MSCONFIG. If the problem goes away, enable startup items one at a time until the conflict is identified. You can also contact support for assistance.

There has been no single item identified that causes the MSMPENG CPU problem. This problem was very high in v1.5, but was mostly resolved in v1.6 and v2.0. There may still be some lingering conflicts that need to be identified.​

How to reach support (FAQ) - http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2421771&SiteID=2"




This was taken from http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/onecaregeneral/thread/d3e8381a-52e8-40a1-bd6f-820113e0e4b3

 

I would suggest look at services that are NOT part of Windows.
Most likely look at third party software like:
Third Party disk optimizer, defragger.

 

Anything in the error log?

I know I have some hash error... that apparently used to be known... check those in depth if you find anything.

I'm pretty sure something is wrong if its taking that long.

I am curious - did you recently update MSE? Maybe an error in the definitions?

 

Remember people, these are not MY machines. I am simply repairing them for various issues and I keep seeing this. And I don't see this on every machine with MSE--just quite a few. For example, I am typing this on a Windows 7 computer right now that does not display this behavior -- albeit a more powerful computer.

Since no one else is seeing it, I suspect that what I am seeing is normal for these machines, which are quite likely all on the underpowered side (recall most are XP)

My post was a result of a "another one?" moment.

I'm going to chalk this up to "normal" start up performance on largely older equipment because there is nothing particularly wrong with these machines by the time I am done with them--they just struggle to get MSE running.

I can say that removing MSE and putting on something else (I've been adding Avira for people) fixes the problem without fail.

 

Well, I have MSE on my 3 and a half years old laptop running XP Pro SP3 (fully updated) and on my 6 years old desktop (also XP Pro SP3 fully updated) and neither one displays a real issue, except of course a bit longer time needed for MSE to go from red to green (which is about 5 to 10 seconds more on some machines, if it happens) when compared to my Win 7 x64 Ultimate laptop.

Meh ... it's possible the machines a struggling with MSE because they are older ... or it's simply due to XP itself.

Frankly the issue is practically non-existant even if it's there, and it's perfectly fine in my opinion.

 

Thinking... I have a 1GB Pentium M 1,6GHz laptop with an 80GB HDD on Win7 (works as a server ) - and that starts up quickly... with MSE...

 

Had high cpu usage with it service. Uninstalled and have been using Avira since. Although i would like to use MSE

 

People should have hardware that can support MSE IMHO, move on from XP it's dead.

 

This application took longer than usual to start up, resulting in a performance degradation in the system startup process:
File Name : MsMpEng.exe
Friendly Name : AntiMalware Service Executable
Version : 2.0.6212.0
Total Time : 6987ms
Degradation Time : 4487ms
Incident Time (UTC) : 1/28/2010 11:46:35 PM

EventData

StartTime 2010-01-28T23:46:35.640Z
NameLength 12
Name MsMpEng.exe
FriendlyNameLength 31
FriendlyName AntiMalware Service Executable
VersionLength 11
Version 2.0.6212.0
TotalTime 6987
DegradationTime 4487
PathLength 59
Path C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Essentials\MsMpEng.exe
ProductNameLength 29
ProductName Microsoft Malware Protection
CompanyNameLength 22
CompanyName Microsoft Corporation

So yeah, i have had it too?

 

well, technically, that is only 7 seconds...what kind of computer is it? OS (32 or 64)? Processor? Ram?

 

I have this too occasionally but I don't feel any difference in bootime.

 

Maybe try scanning the OS fully once?

KIS used to speed up after that, maybe MSE does too?

 

Have only seen your delay you describe when I don't use my old XP laptop for a few days - then appears to take a bit of time - mainly to tell me what already know - definitions are out of date etc. Other than that starts up normally on the XP system I have. WIN7 systems - no issues.

 

You would be surprised just how much people have old hardware that's able to run XP, let alone anything new.
Financial costs for the most part and a lot of other factors prohibit people from buying new hardware.
Not everyone have the ability to buy something up to date.
Heck, I come from Croatia/Zagreb where technology is about 23% more expensive than the fully priced tech in UK/London.
For me, it was different because I decided I want to move to London ultimately, so in my visits in between I purchased my £600 laptop there with a tax refund.
The laptop in question was NOT available in Croatia to begin with (still isn't), and had it been, the model with comparable specs costed twice as much (or at least around 2.5x Croatian standard salary).

Go figure ...

XP works fine with MSE. Granted, at times it needs some to do it's thing, but it's not so problematic.

 

I actually think there may be something to this--at least partially. Since every machine I have seen that displayed this behavior was broken or experiencing problems, it is quite likely that it had not been run for several days at least.

I still think that MSE is a bit more memory/cpu intense than Avira, though.

 

You know... coming to think about it...

Since I switched to AHCI mode on my SZ and had to uninstall and then reinstall MSE I'm getting a hash error - Event ID 3002 - apparently the Beta had that issue and there seems to be no way round it

Anyway - that does cause a time of lag at log in and immediately after sleep - I'm not sure what it is, remove MSE and its gone again...

It might be the same in your case - but I have no idea why it happens.

 

imo the new avast is better than either mse or avira..

 

I'm running MSSE on a Dell Inspiron (XP Pro) I bought in 2000. So far I have not noticed any performance degradation. I think if there were any it would be readily apparent.

The system runs a 650 MHz processor and 384 MB of RAM.