MsMpEng.exe - high CPU usage

I have a "new" computer with Windows XP (SP3) installed at the bookstore where I sometimes help out. Works pretty well (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.80 GHz, 2.0 MB RAM), and programs like Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop work perfectly fine.

However, as soon as I open Windows Explorer, or try to open a file e.g. from Excel, everything slows down to a crawl. It can take several minutes for Windows Explorer to fully open, or to scroll down a list of documents.

It didn't take me long to find that MsMpEng.exe is using 50% CPU and heavy I/O during that time. Once the display is complete, CPU usage goes down to 0. But as soon as I click on another folder, then same thing starts again.

Now I have searched Google high and low, and I found that this is a very widespread phenomenon. However, I did not find any solution how to curb that CPU utilization. Someone suggested to run a full scan with MSE, which I did, but that did not stop it.

Microsoft Security Essentials 4.1.522.0 - no other security software installed.

Thank you in advance for any suggestion.

 

Greetings, pwillener...

As I'm sure you've already discovered msmpeng.exe appears to be a non-malicious file, per se. According to Paretologic.com:

Apparently the 'high CPU usage' symptom is a fairly widespread problem as illustrated by numerous hits when performing searches for msmpeng.exe. My initial suggestion is to disable Windows Defender to see if that changes your symptoms.

 

Hi my friend , you can look at this topic

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

you can try

Start
Run msconfig
ok

navigating to startup tab removing all boxes , windows is asking you about restart - go for it :wave

 

Thank you for your responses.

Disabling MSE 'Real-time protection' or the MsMpEng service immediately cures the problem. However, the MSE tray icon also immediately turns deep red with a balloon "Your computer is at risk".

I disabled all non-Microsoft startup items, but that did not change anything.


The amazing thing is that I have MSE installed on every computer (Windows XP and 7), but only this one exhibits these symptoms.

I will try an un/reinstall of MSE.

 

Un/reinstalled MSE and ran a full scan; no change!

 

You can try this :wave

http://adrianmejia.com/blog/2011/07/15/faster-windows-xp-removing-msmpeng-exe-and-other-programs/

 

Thank you; I already did this (see my yesterday's post); it immediately turned the MSE tray icon red with the balloon "your computer may be at risk".

The easiest would be if I just use a different AV on this computer, but I prefer to use the same AV on all computers.

On the other hand it seems an impossible task, as there seems to be no solution on all the hundreds (or thousands) of posts all over the Internet.

Maybe I should open a support case with Microsoft?

 

My opinion is that you can run avira rescue cd ensuring that there isn't any infection in your machine ( from a clean computer though )

http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=82163

using

http://www.majorgeeks.com/ImgBurn_d4870.html

to create this even you might different antivirus inspecting the counteraction of your machine :wave

 

Yeah, it's pretty obvious what's going on - but what to do about it is the real question. Those search results for symptoms comparable to yours I alluded to in post #2 were mostly from Microsoft forums, and it seemed that for the most part no solutions were ever found.

You could just have one of those anomalous machines that contains a conflict between MSE and some installed 3rd-party program(s). You might try disabling all startups and selectively re-enabling to try to find the culprit(s).

 

Ack! Just saw that, so ignore my last suggestion. Oh, well...:-o

 

Perhaps you could try running Sysinternals Process Monitor to see what MsMpEng.exe is doing during these times of high CPU usage.
*See if it's continually scanning the same directory or files
*Interaction with other processes

 

Thanks for all the additional suggestions. I will definitely try ProcMon next week when I'm back at that computer.

I also had just another idea; that machine has a multi core processor, that's why the CPU never goes higher than 50%. I will try a CPU control program; there seem to be many available.

 

Tried CPU-Control, and things got I tiny bit better, but it still takes about one minute for Explorer to display fully, and 5 to 10 seconds to scroll down a page. I also noticed (using SpeedFan) that both CPU cores heat up from 40°C to over 70°C during that period.

I then remembered that one computer in the shop has AVG (free) installed, so I uninstalled MSE and installed AVG, and suddenly the computer works perfectly normal.

So at the end it's not the result I was hoping for, but at least we have a working computer now...

 

If a program doesn't work, replace it.
I had three identical Dell Dimensions, model 2400, all running XP Home with the same updates. I installed Avira. On two of them and it worked fine. On the third computer I had to wait minutes just to get the program listing when I clicked the start menu. The really slow computer even had more RAM than one of the other two! I had to remove it and replace it with another av program.

 

I had more patience when I was younger, and I would have spent weeks to find and fix the problem. But these days the easiest solution is sometimes just that: easiest