OneCare and constant stuttering/thrashing

[nullpointerus]

My videos have suddenly started stuttering every second or so. This is unbearable -- I cannot watch any recorded TV shows. So I reboot. No difference. Then I notice the hard drive is still running for several minutes after I close the video. So I open Task Manager and see that one of my cores is between 70-100% in use while I have nothing running.

OK, I leave this running and...running...and running for a while. Eventually, the system settles down to about 2-5% usage on each core, which is fairly normal. Now, whenever the stuttering occurs, the MsMpEng.exe process starts spiking up to 50% CPU usage (or 100% of one core, obviously). I do a search on this and find it's Windows Defender.

Great.

Thing is, I do not have Windows Defender (WD) enabled. When I go to help and support to disable WD, a window pops up saying that WD is disabled and giving me an option to re-enable it. I do have OneCare installed, but that's a different program (and process).

Or is it?

When I right-click on MsMpEng.exe in the processes tab of Task Manager and select Properties, the new window tells me that this program resides in the OneCare folder. So I configure OneCare's scanner to exclude my Recorded TV folder. No difference. The program completely ignores my exclusion rules and goes berserk whenever I watch a TV show.

Anyone want to bet my game folder exclusions aren't working, either?

I'm switching to Avast 4 for now. What are you using?

 

[Riverhound777]

It was probably onecare doing a defrag or virus scan in the background. Next time disable it and see if its stops.

 

[nullpointerus]

I checked for activity when I discovered the MsMpEng.exe process problem. I hunted through the system tray and in the OneCare interface, but there was no indication that it was scanning. No warning, no indication -- and now, no OneCare software on my rig.

My computer's much snappier.

When I play Oblivion, there's no 1 second delay every time I open a treasure chest or try to loot a body. The map pops up almost instaneously. I don't loose 10% of my mouse and and keyboard input. In short, the game doesn't lag like heck.

Whatever the problem with its on-access scanning, it's a menace on my rig.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Were you running One Care 1.0 / 1.1 and then let it update to 1.5? I would have suggested uninstalling 1.1 / 1.0 and WIndows Defender and then install One Care 1.5.

OneCare 1.5 integrates the antispyware into the same process as the antispyware, so no reason to even have Windows Defender installed with the new version of One Care (other than you want some of the tools that it offers).

If you think you might have residual onecare software left on your machine, checkout Microsoft's OneCare removal tool:

http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=663803&SiteID=2

 

[nullpointerus]

Vista comes with Windows Defender. I did an upgrade install of Vista but uninstalled OneCare and downloaded the latest version off their site. I don't plan on using OneCare anymore since I've had enough of its various problems on my rig and the family PCs.

Your post is good information, though, and if OneCare works for you, that's great.