MsMpEng.exe Hell

MsMpEng.exe is the antispyware component of Microsoft Defender antivirus software suite.  It's also part of the commercial Microsoft ForeFront antivirus software suite.

I run a Intel Core i5 M520 dual core processor running at 2.40 GHz, however, when MsMpEng.exe kicks in, the CPU utilization spikes to 100%.  The system becomes completely unresponsive until MsMpEng.exe completes.

Supposedly there's a log file somewhere that indicates which files MsMpEng.exe is scanning that is an expensive operation, but I haven't been able to find it, but adding processes to the list of processes to ignore has eliminated the problem of the system being unresponsive.

To add processes to the ignore list, goto Home -> Tools -> Options and scroll down to the bottom of the Options page.

I've been adding processes steadily and here's my list of processes to ignore:

• googledrivesync.exe - GoogleDrive
• communicator.exe - Microsoft Lync
• crecplayer.exe - Microsoft Lync
• devenv.exe - Microsoft Visual Studio
• MsDtsSrvr.exe - Microsoft SQL Server
• msmdsrv.exe - Microsoft SQL Server
• ReportingServicesService.exe - Microsoft SQL Server
• sqlservr.exe - Microsoft SQL Server
• VBoxSVC.exe - VirtualBox
• VirtualBox.exe - VirtualBox
• SkyDrive.exe - Microsoft SkyDrive
• googletalk.exe - GoogleTalk
• mstsc.exe - Microsoft Terminal Server Client
• tvnserver.exe - TightVNC Server
• vncviewer.exe - TightVNC Client