If you are running some form of Symantec Antivirus and a ZoneAlarm firewall, you may have a problem that is not your fault. I am running Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 9.0.2.1000 with ZoneAlarm Pro 5.5.062. I am in this situation and I do not like the result. The proximate cause of my problem is that a portion of the Symantec software will suddenly go to full CPU utilization and my computer acts like a sleepy dog. (Well, it is a dog by today’s standards (P3, 1.1GHz), but it is a working dog.) This is an issue that Symantec and ZoneAlarm need to fix.
The culprit is a Symantec executable that exists on your disk named ccApp.exe. For me, it lives in the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared” directory. Formally, it is the Symantec Common Client User Session, version 2.2.1.4, dated 06/09/2004. This program does not like it when I send email. When I do, it goes to full CPU utilization.
ZoneAlarm is aware of the problem and tells you to disable email scanning. I could not relocate their bulletin, but there are many posts about the issue in their forums.
Symantec is aware of the problem and has this to say:
- Situation: When you send email and email scanning is enabled in Norton AntiVirus 2004, the PC slows down. Windows Task Manager shows that ccApp.exe is using 99 percent of the CPU resources. Solution: This problem is typically caused when a firewall is preventing ccApp.exe from accessing the Internet. To solve the problem, follow the steps in these solutions in the order shown.
Their advice is to basically disable email scanning,
My personal solution was to have both program scanners off and rely on file system protection. If ccApp.exe goes crazy, I bring up the Task Manager and set ccApp.exe to the lowest possible thread priority. This lets me get things done since the rest of the machine will run at a higher priority. I hope they fix this soon.
Update 1: This problem appeared when I upgraded the Symantec software, so I think it is their issue. Symantec added “Outbound Worm Heuristic“ scanning, which basically acts as a firewall. Turning that off individually did not seem to work. I had to disable all email scanning. Opening firewall ports per Symantec's instructions (see link above), did not work either.
Update 2: Symantec has issued Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 9.0.3.1000 that changed ccApp.exe to version 2.2.2.8 dated 10 December 2004. The behavior is unchanged, however.