Anti-virus software - the #1 cause of PC performance troubles

Many users realize their anti-virus software consumes massive amounts of system resources, and hope that Process Lasso will somehow keep it in check. Sadly, this is not the case. I've probably written about this 100 separate times, in various emails, blogs, and forum posts. I figured I'd write about it again, here. A more formal document on the subject is still forthcoming.

All major anti-virus, anti-malware, and other security software has an on-demand/real-time scanner. For simplicity, I'll refer to all these products as anti-virus software.

The on-demand scanner is responsible for checking every file that is accessed on your PC. This means every time any application (process) needs to open a file, it must first WAIT for the anti-virus software to scan the file. This is why you should NEVER lower the priority of anti-virus software, as the whole system has to wait on it to finish its job anyway.

To improve performance, the on-demand scanner caches already scanned files. Unfortunately, this consumes more virtual memory, and can cause performance troubles of its own on PCs with relatively low amounts of RAM. (Side note: Another common performance problem, especially for low-RAM systems, is resident processes with memory leaks.. but that's another subject).

Process Lasso excludes common anti-virus software from ProBalance restraint, but for rare anti-virus software, you may need to manually exclude it from ProBalance restraint if you see log entries indicating it has been periodically restrained.

My recommendation is to reconfigure your anti-virus software's real-time scanner so that it is less aggressive. For instance, you can reduce the types of files it scans, or the types of events it scans upon. For instance, if it is set to scan files when they are opened and closed, you can change it to only scan them when opened.

If you temporarily disable your anti-virus software's real-time (on-demand) scanner completely, or uninstall it, you will likely see a noticeable improvement in system performance. You may also want to experiment with different anti-virus software, as some performs better than others. However, NEVER install more than one anti-virus product at a time.. NEVER.

I personally don't even use anti-virus software's real-time scanning because I can't stand the performance impact.

HOWEVER,  I would be negligent to mention that you expose yourself to a little more risk if you disable or reduce your anti-virus software's on-demand scanning. If you are careful about what is introduced onto your PC, you can mitigate this risk. Make NO changes if you do not understand the risks I am speaking of. Instead, perhaps try different anti-virus software (but never at the same time). Some is known to perform MUCH better than others. Again, make NO CHANGES if you do not understand the risks and accept full responsibility for theoretical consequences of those changes (infection of some sort or another).