Windows Defender CPU Idle Usage

[Megalith]

Is it just me or does the CPU usage of Windows Defender ramp up to an absurd level when you leave your system idle? AFAIK, when your system is idle, Windows Defender will execute a number of tasks that range from scanning to updating itself.

I literally could not go to sleep the other night because my fans would continuously start up every time I got back into bed. Eventually, I figured out it was msmpeng.exe, and the only way to stop it was to disable real-time protection in Windows Defender. Even disabling all of the related entries in Task Scheduler wouldn't stop it.

 

[Liger88]

No it's not unusual. It glitches out quite a bit with the high CPU usage that basically never goes down. I've since disabled it and relied heavily on its true successor MSE which does a much better job than Defender ever has. It can be tricky disabling though. Been a long time since I've done it but I remember I had to go through some hoops.

Really is an annoying glitch.

 

[bigdogchris]

But with Windows Defender, you can run other AV products. With MSE you cannot. So there are scenarios where someone may want to run Defender + an AV.

 

[PornoSatan]

Is it just me or does the CPU usage of Windows Defender ramp up to an absurd level when you leave your system idle? AFAIK, when your system is idle, Windows Defender will execute a number of tasks that range from scanning to updating itself.

I literally could not go to sleep the other night because my fans would continuously start up every time I got back into bed. Eventually, I figured out it was msmpeng.exe, and the only way to stop it was to disable real-time protection in Windows Defender. Even disabling all of the related entries in Task Scheduler wouldn't stop it.

Yeah I noticed it too. What I also don't like about it is it ramps up disk activity as well. On the other hand though people don't like AV's running scans while they're using their system, so the only other options really are to do them while idle or on demand.