Windows 7: MSE-MsMpEng.exe

I have read so many posts raving about MSE, that I decided to give it a try. While it has been okay on my primary rig, I'm having a problem with MsMpEng.exe spiking the CPU to 100%. I read one thread elsewhere that said that this was due to some kind of conflict with some other process, but since I just started setting up the rig today, I have a lot less running than I do on the primary rig. I did go to msconfig and disabled everything, but that didn't solve the problem.

Before sending MSE to the outer limits, I wanted to see if anyone here can offer a solution?

I haven't noticed the issue.

How often? How long does it last?

Is it scanning when it does that?

Mine is using 0% CPU as I type this and 49 megs of RAM.

Do the config related tabs in the program look ordinary?

I may have posted prematurely...I'm not certain, because it has become erratic and unpredictable. It should not be scanning, because I have it set to do so at 2:00 AM on Sundays, and I have not yet found any direct correlation to any other process. Yet, at the moment it has calmed down, so I'll have to wait and see.

I'm not sure--is MSE supposed to do a full scan by default when first installed??? That might explain it, but I can't recall if that occurred when I installed it.

It will do a special "first time scan" upon installation IF you check the box in setup for it to do so

Checking the tab, as you suggested, I thought that I had found the cause, but experimenting farther, it is apparent that I didn't. On the Update tab, it showed that the last update occurred at 12:36 AM, which was close to the time of the problem, but when I directed it to update again, it did cause a big CPU spike, but the process involved was scvhost, not MsMpEng.exe, and when completed, it shows the time of 6:21 PM which is far from my current time. Even if it were recording another time zone, it still wasn't correct, so that doesn't make sense to me.

Are you using the version from MS or a BETA from connect?

I unchecked the default scan on installation, because there really wasn't much to scan, since the entire system is only a few hours old.

MS.

I think that I might have found the problem. It just started spiking again, and when I moused over Process Explorer, it showed the acs.exe (Outpost Firewall) as the cause, but repeating the mouseover a number of times MsMpEng.exe would appear. I'm beginning to think that there is a conflict between MSE and Outpost. If that is the case, Outpost will win and MSE will go looking for another home.

Very odd!, I had not seen this problem on my primary rig before, but while typing this, it started doing the same thing, but didn't last as long. I guess that I'm going to go back to Outpost Security Suite, instead of just the firewall, so that I can use their AV.

EDIT: An addendum to the above, I just remembered that twice today MSE has popped a alert about some process belonging to Outpost, that it said was an unknown risk, and wanted to send it to MS, but in each case I canceled it out.