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.

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.

ignatzatsonic said:

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.

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.

Zidane24 said:

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

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.