MsMpEng.exe is the nugget draining my CPU...

March 26, 2007 · 1 min read

It has been a few months since I installed Windows Live OneCare and results are mixed.  For the most part it runs quietly in the background providing, at least I think, real-time protection.  The problem the last few starts has been MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender) crippling my machine with heavy CPU utilization.  I've Googled, Live- Searched, MS-Knowledge Base searched and found basically the same thing... High CPU... but no resolution.

I dug through OneCare help and still didn't find anything.  Therefore I decided to look in the registry and found: HKLM | One Care Protection | Exclusions.  Under Exclusions I found three folders: Extensions, Paths, and Processes.  I know through the One Care GUI I can designate folders and files for exclusion.  I have excluded a few folders and found these in Paths.  On a whim, I decided to add MsMpEng.exe in Processes.  I was initially blocked lacking permission.  I added full control and then added the DWORD: MsMpEng.exe having a data value of 0.  I restored the permissions and restarted.  After the restart, MsMpEng.exe has not consumed more than 50% CPU at startup (for only a brief time) and then occasionally 7-10% when browsing or starting other applications.  For the most part it runs quietly at 0%  I'm only guessing, but MsMpEng.exe may have been monitoring MsMpEng.exe.  So far so good...

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Coleman

New on Geeks with Blogs

  • We Won The One Award I Actually Care About

    Full Scale made the Inc. 5000 for the fifth year straight, the 12th listing across my three companies. Here is why the one award you cannot buy is worth stopping for.

  • Your Customers Build the Features Now

    I let a tool I liked sit dead for a year rather than build the features I wanted. An MCP server meant I never had to, and your customers can do the same to your product.

  • Get the Size of a Directory in Linux the Easy Way

    du -sh for the quick answer, ncdu for the cleanup, df for the disk itself: every command for checking directory size in Linux, plus why du and df never agree.

  • Vim Search and Replace: The Ultimate Guide

    One :%s command replaces every match in a file before a find dialog would even open. The Vim substitute patterns worth the muscle memory: flags, ranges, capture groups, and multi-file edits.