Windows 7: Real-time anti-virus scanners using 100% CPU until it's faulty

I wasn't sure whether to put this thread under the 'System Security' section, or the 'Performance and Maintenance' section

This has been a bit of a long-standing problem for me now, to which I can't see a solution to.

Before I replaced Microsoft Security Essentials, it's been the msmpEng.exe that's doing the exact same thing as the now Mcafee's mcshield.exe is doing - for ages at a time using nearly 100% CPU usage when I'm on the internet (it doesn't matter what webbrowser I use, it seems), and while it's doing that my machine keeps on being unresponsive.



So much so, that sometimes Mcafee turns its Realtime scanning off, and am unable to turn it on again (which I suppose should be a good thing!) - yet, it still shows up in Windows Task Manager, still using a lot of CPU usage. Please see attached image by what I mean here.

On occasion, it's gotten SO bad (I think it is this that's the cause), that my computer freezes and my HDD does that slow 'clicking' sound [of death - it clicks about every 1 1/2 seconds] for a long while! Now, I know people will say that means my HDD is on it's way out, but when I scanned it with HD Tune, out of the entire Hard Drive only one sector was red/corrupt, and the rest is all green!

I don't *think* I've got any other anti-malware software that's incompatible with McAfee - the ones I do have claim to be compatible with it anyway. I can give you a list of them if need be.


I'd be most grateful to get this sorted, as even as I was managing that attachment it kept stop responding (using Waterfox - the 64-bit 'version' of Firefox - to type this in)

Gaz,

I'm unclear if you are running both MaCafee and MSE concurrently? We see lots of problems in systems running MaCafee - when we see these problems, they are almost always solved by installing MSE instead.

I would recommend uninstalling MaCafee completely, installing MSE and then doing this:

1. Click Start
2. In the search box, type cmd
3. In the list that appears, right-click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator
4. In the command window that opens, type sfc /scannow and hit enter.

Report the output once it finishes.

Regards,
Golden

Oh, no, I completely uninstalled MSE before installing McAfee - sorry for not making that clear.

I'll have to run the scan when I come back; gotta go now.