Symantec LiveUpdate sucking 100% CPU for hours on end?

arcas

Platinum Member
Apr 10, 2001
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Hi guys. Anybody ever seen Symantec's automated LiveUpdate program (luall.exe) suck 100% CPU for hours on end? Earlier this week Symantec Client Firewall was installed on my office workstation and I've had problems with luall.exe ever since. When it's doing this, I don't see much, if any, disk or network activity. According to the task manager, luall.exe's memory usage is fluctuating as if the program is actually doing something but over time the memory usage is trending upward.

Until now, I've always killed the process after a couple or three hours of this because 1) it causes my laptop CPU to sit at around 75C and 2) it simply kills performance. Today I'm going to let it run for the duration of the day but I don't have high hopes of it actually finishing on its own.

Also interesting is this only happens when the automatic LiveUpdate takes place. If I run LiveUpdate manually (either by running luall from the command line or from SCF's menu), it finishes in a few seconds.

Anybody ever seen similar behavior?

 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
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Symantec programs should be avoided. Period.
 

arcas

Platinum Member
Apr 10, 2001
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I have no choice in the matter. My company has standardized on Symantec Client Firewall and A/V. *sigh*

 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
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Originally posted by: arcas
I have no choice in the matter. My company has standardized on Symantec Client Firewall and A/V. *sigh*


"Please help guys, I have problem, but I'm forbidden to solve it. Can you help?"
 

Schadenfroh

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2003
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Originally posted by: ForceMajeur
try NOD32 and dump the resource Hog.

Looks like that is out of the question
Originally posted by: arcas
I have no choice in the matter. My company has standardized on Symantec Client Firewall and A/V. *sigh*

 

arcas

Platinum Member
Apr 10, 2001
2,155
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Originally posted by: postmortemIA
"Please help guys, I have problem, but I'm forbidden to solve it. Can you help?"

'cept that's not what I wrote. I merely wrote that I cannot uninstall the Symantec software in favor of a different firewall/av solution. If uninstalling the Symantec software is indeed the only solution, then you are correct...I'm forbidden to solve it. However, it's quite possible that this behavior is simply due to a conflict with something else in the setup (hell, it could have something to do with running XP as a VMWare client). For example, according to the PC Mag forums, there is currently an issue with Norton 2007 that'll cause 100% CPU usage if "FLV player" is installed on the system. Removing FLV player supposedly fixes that particular problem.

Anyway, I suppose it's easy enough to script a daemon that monitors for luall.exe going apeshit and kills it and its parent process...