MS Security Essentials makes explorer slow
With Security Essentials, installed Explorer is less responsive. Folders with files in list mode are slow to have their icons displayed. Also, I have a toolbar on the taskbar set up for quicklaunch. I click the >> to show the full list of shortcuts and it brings up a blank menu. It takes about 15-20 seconds to display the list, and during this time the taskbar is locked up. This only happens the first time I do this per session.
November 7th, 2009 7:29pm

i had the same problem and network folders were painful. I went back to nod32 for the time being. I would be willing to try it again once there is a new rev of the software.
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November 15th, 2009 7:15pm

Sorry, my internet was out for a few days. I uninstalled MSE and the problem went away. I reinstalled and it came back. Disabling startup items and services doesn't help at all.
November 15th, 2009 11:42pm

Same was the problem with Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. I could solve the problem by disabling the self protection feature of the antivirus and enabling it after a few secs. If you have a similar feature in your programs, try disabling it.
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November 15th, 2009 11:46pm

With Security Essentials, installed Explorer is less responsive. Folders with files in list mode are slow to have their icons displayed.Also, I have a toolbar on the taskbar set up for quicklaunch. I click the >> to show the full list of shortcuts and it brings up a blank menu. It takes about 15-20 seconds to display the list, and during this time the taskbar is locked up. This only happens the first time I do this per session. Having same problem with Quick Launch "hanging" for ~10 seconds or so when my machine has been idle for ~20 or more minutes.Running Win XP Pro SP3, Microsoft Security Essentials Version: 1.0.1961.0, Antimalware Client Version: 2.1.6519.0, Engine Version: 1.1.5502.0, Antivirus definitions: 1.77.726.0, Antispyware definitions: 1.77.726.0Have mittagated the "hanging" by going into Security Essentials/Settings/Excluded files & locations and excluding my Quick Launch folder in C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.Now Quick Launch only stutters slightly once & only after a re-boot (before the OS is fully loaded), after the machine is fully booted up & completely idle the Quick Launch toolbar operates at full speed.I know this work around leaves my Quick Launch folder unprotected but sometimes you just have to compromise. I hope this helps.
March 10th, 2010 6:29am

Seriously??? It's been a year, and this is still a serious problem. Real-time protection on MSI degrades the performance of Windows Explorer drastically. With real-time protection on, it takes a long time to open explorer, a long time to load/move through folders, a long time to right click on any file/folder in explorer - basically, everything in explorer is extremely slow when MSI real-time protection is on. You'd think, with MSI being a Microsoft product, they would've ensured that it actually runs well on Windows and doesn't negatively affect WINDOWS components. Apparently testing and quality assurance are too highly prioritized. So I've turned off Real-time protection totally, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having an anti-virus/anti-malware program on the computer, but I refuse to have MSI slow down one of the main and most important parts of the operating system. When real-time protection is on, MsMpEng.exe or something like that loves to take up crazy amounts of CPU usage and just be annoying and slow down the computer. Also, due to turning off real-time protection, MSI loves to notify me all the time that my PC in "unsafe" now - but I'll choose that over the whole system running slow like a snail (I don't download random exe's off the internet and run them either, so I've never gotten viruses or anything while the real-time protection has been off) Also, I've read that MSI real-time scans several Windows system files and that can cause slowdown as well. Really these exceptions for the system files should be built into MSI's file/process exception. Yet MSI comes with 0 exceptions, and Users are expected to nagivate through system file directories and add then to MSI's exception list in order to stop unnecessary scans that slow the PC down (and of course MSI only lets you add exceptions one-by-one, no CTRL multiselect...). I know I can most likely add explorer.exe to the process exceptions list to stop the real-time protection slows down with Explorer, but that just seems pointless to me, I'd rather just turn off the real-time protection, as it slows down on other processes other than explorer.exe as well sometimes. Until real-time protection is fixed to work better with Windows components and system files, I will leave it off so that my computer isn't slowed down so much. Now, I'd uninstall MSI and go use a third part anti-virus/anti-malware program, but almost all of them are annoying and a pain to have running on my system. So when I saw that Microsoft had put out their own anti-virus/anti-malware program I was greatly happy, and thought "Yay, I bet this AV program will work very nicely with windows and integrate well", seeing as it's made by the same company. I was disappointed that I was wrong.... Please look into this more than just saying "Reinstall it, run antivirus program, etc" - I know the problem exists. Many people have had this same problem. There is many posts on the internet about the slowing down that MSI and real-time protection causes, yet there has been no fix from Microsoft. It shouldn't be THAT hard to fix, it's interacting with Windows components, which the MSI developers should have source code access to, or at least communication channels with the component developers. It seems odd that third-party AV programs interact better with Windows components than Microsoft's own AV program, don't you think? Thanks
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December 16th, 2010 1:49am

MSE version 2.0 will be released soon. Try the new version again."A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/
December 16th, 2010 10:00am

MSE version 2.0 is released today. Get the new version and try it again."A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/
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December 16th, 2010 4:59pm

With the 2.0 version, the response time is somewhat improved for me over what it was before.
January 10th, 2011 5:02am

With the 2.0 version, the response time is somewhat improved for me over what it was before. I am having a similar problem with MS Security Essentials slowing down Windows Explorer significantly. I noticed it when I do a search in the Search window from Windows Explorer, and then I try to sort the search results by date (descending order). The Search window becomes unresponsive for a FEW MINUTES before it finally does the sort. Then I turned off the real time protection in MS Security Essentials and tried the search again, and it sorted all the results immediately. So it's definitely an issue with MS Security Essentials. I did upgrade to MS Security Essentials 2.0 just now, but that did not solve the problem.
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January 20th, 2011 2:43am

i just tried v2 of mse... and i still have the same problems... oh well.. back to nod32... bummer.
January 22nd, 2011 10:03am

have you seen Settings, exclude in MSE ? This article aslos helps http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/69294.aspx
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January 29th, 2011 9:32pm

I have exactly the same problem. When I'll get too annoyed by these long lags I will change my virus protection software, unless this gets fixed.
May 26th, 2011 9:48am

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