Severe slowdown from MBAM

[dv986]

Hi everyone.. I'm having same problems with the latest version.

I'd like to say that I excluded every file that was mentioned (including directories just to be certain), and although there is SLIGHT improvement (or maybe it only seems like that), mbam service is still slowing down my computer drastically. I'm using Win7 x64, G-Data antivirus 2010 and Immunet. I set the exclusions in both programs.

Hope you fix this soon...

[Larry West]

Me too. Win XP SP 3 laptop with CA Antivirus. After updating to 1.45 last night (and running a full scan) I am experiencing the out of control CPU usage by mbanservice.exe.

In reading the other posts in this thread this seems to be an across the board issue with different AV programs. XP seems to figure prominently but not exclusively.

Can anyone in the MWB organization let us know whether this is an issue with this release or whether it is something we need to deal with in our own configurations? Is there a way to revert back to a previous version?

[Ibrad]

I thought it was just my PC when MBAM spikes at odd times. The problem has been happening on my machine too but after the short spike cpu and mem usage goes back to normal.

[advancedsi]

Final update, additional ram (and a full uninstall/clean/reinstall) fixed the issue. Apparently if you're running XP, AV and MBAM look for more than 512MB of ram The uninstall and reinstalls were a bit of a PITA but what are ya gonna do. I concur with the above, McAfee Enterprise is a solidly decent product. McAfee Home/Security Suite on the other hand, not so much.

[exile360]

Very true, these days just running AV software will pretty much require more than 512Mb for decent performance in XP.

[dv986]

Well I have 4 gigs.

[tommarnk]

I've fielded several called from my customers today claiming severe PC slowness to the point of non-functionality. I've narrowed the cause of this down to MBAM (when I kill the 2 services from task manager the speed of the systems immediately return to normal) All are running legally licensed and registered copies. Networks and machines vary as do anti-virus programs on those machines. Most are WinXP SP3 but beyond that the similarity is MalwareBytes. Is anyone aware of a recent update that could hose their systems like this? I'm fearing more calls any minute now.

Thanks.

did they copy from network?

i have a similar problem , whole system goes slow and slugish, when copying from a server over 11n, network transfer slows down the a crawl (~700 Kb/s not ~7 MB/s i get without mbam on)

Eset Smart Security 4.2

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware 1.45

Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit

Ralink RT3090 11n

AMD Athlon II M300 2Ghz

AMD 785GM Chipset

ATI Mobility Radoen HD 4200

Samsung 3GB PC6400 DDR2

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB

[AdvancedSetup]

Try disabling the Website Blocking then wait a minute and try the file transfer again.

[Larry West]

OK, I started a support ticket on this issue as it was horrible. I was watching my machine and found a really interesting correlation between the MBAM cpu usage spiking and the activities of a process called jqs.exe. Below is the text of a response to MWB technical support with my observations:

OK, here

[advancedsi]

Seems I spoke too soon. System is still locking up and now another is locking up when Outlook (and MS Word by default) are in use. Both immediately stop having the issue when MBAM service is killed. Both are XP Pro SP3 with all service packs. One is Office 2003 (the Outlook issue one) and the other is Office 2000. Both are Symantec Corp with all exclusions added.

[sendhere]

I'm having the same problem.

Intel Croe i7, 6GB ram, Windows 7 64bit, Microsoft Security Essentials.

When Malwarebytes protection is enabled my system responds extremely slowly. For example, it can take up to 30 seconds for something as simple as the Windows Volume Control to show up after clicked. The same goes waiting for the context menu to appear after right clicking on a file, or opening any random program. When I exit Malwarebytes or start Windows without protection enabled, these problems go away completely.

[advancedsi]

NONE of these issues were present in 1.44. Can we go back to that version but continue to update definitions? Anyone from MWB listening please???

[Francois_Blais]

In my case, the AV is VIPRE.

As soon as I enable MBAM real-time protection, the CPU gets loaded as soon as I do anything on the PC.

Can we expect something in the forth-coming 1.46 release ? (network speed problem fix)

Can we get 1.44 to downgrade our systems to check if the culprit is in 1.45 ?

Thanks.

(tried the help desk but it appears they can't help either...

[exile360]

Greetings

The slow connection speed will be fixed in version 1.46, as for performance issues, it's pretty much the same as always as far as I know, exclude all of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware's files and processes from any AV and Firewall software that might be installed on your system as it's the most common cause of performance issues.

While there may indeed be performance tweaks and improvements in how MBAM runs in the background, if you're getting severe CPU spikes and performance problems, then it's pretty much got to be an issue with the AV/FW/AS etc scanning MBAM's background process while it is checking other processes in memory and no performance improvements in MBAM itself will likely be able to fix that.

Also be aware that if you added 1.44's files/processes as exclusions previously, deleting the exclusions and adding them once more might fix the issue since some AVs will not continue to exclude a file when its version number/size/hash etc changes (as it would when MBAM was updated from 1.44 to 1.45).

I hope it helps.

[dv986]

Greetings

The slow connection speed will be fixed in version 1.46, as for performance issues, it's pretty much the same as always as far as I know, exclude all of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware's files and processes from any AV and Firewall software that might be installed on your system as it's the most common cause of performance issues.

While there may indeed be performance tweaks and improvements in how MBAM runs in the background, if you're getting severe CPU spikes and performance problems, then it's pretty much got to be an issue with the AV/FW/AS etc scanning MBAM's background process while it is checking other processes in memory and no performance improvements in MBAM itself will likely be able to fix that.

Also be aware that if you added 1.44's files/processes as exclusions previously, deleting the exclusions and adding them once more might fix the issue since some AVs will not continue to exclude a file when its version number/size/hash etc changes (as it would when MBAM was updated from 1.44 to 1.45).

I hope it helps.

Buuut... how come i never had to exclude it for previous versions?

[Francois_Blais]

While there may indeed be performance tweaks and improvements in how MBAM runs in the background, if you're getting severe CPU spikes and performance problems, then it's pretty much got to be an issue with the AV/FW/AS etc scanning MBAM's background process while it is checking other processes in memory and no performance improvements in MBAM itself will likely be able to fix that.

Hi.

Please let me remind you MBAM is causing the CPU spikes, not the other software...

Also be aware that if you added 1.44's files/processes as exclusions previously, deleting the exclusions and adding them once more might fix the issue since some AVs will not continue to exclude a file when its version number/size/hash etc changes (as it would when MBAM was updated from 1.44 to 1.45).

I hope it helps.

I never tried VIPRE with MBAM 1.44 so I don't know if it as working better.

Thus my question about downgrading MBAM to 1.44 so I could verify if the incompatibility appeared with 1.45.

Regards,

Fran

[exile360]

You can get version 1.44 of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here, just don't try to update it as it will automatically download and install version 1.45 if you do. As for performance issues, again, if mbamservice.exe is being queried/locked up by another process (such as antivirus or firewall), that can cause it to have spikes in CPU usage.

Please let me know how the testing goes.

Thanks

[sendhere]

Thanks for the reply, exile360.

I took your advice and excluded the MBAM processes in Microsoft Security Essentials. The problem persists.

My system runs as smooth as silk until the second I check the "Enable Protection Module" box in MBAM. The slowness comes on instantly and even continues AFTER I kill all of the MBAM process on my machine. The only way to get my system back to normal after initiating MBAM's Protection Module is by rebooting. This issue did not exist for me before the 1.45 update.

If there is a conflict between MBAM and my anti virus then it is much more complicated than the anti virus scanning MBAM's background process since the slowness continues after MBAM an all of its processes are shut down completely.

I would like to do more testing, but the constant rebooting becoming a nuisance and I've already sunk far too much time into this issue.

Thanks again for looking into this.

---

Intel Croe i7, 6GB ram, Windows 7 64bit, Microsoft Security Essentials.

[exile360]

MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) has been known to have performance issues with MBAM if the exclusions aren't done a certain way. I'd recommend excluding them per the tutorial located here, just be sure to adapt the file locations to your version of Windows accordingly. Here's a complete list of MBAM's files and folders in a 64 bit operating system:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbam.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamgui.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamservice.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\zlib.dll
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbam.dll
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamext.dll
  
• C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\rules.ref
  
• C:\Windows\System32\drivers\mbam.sys
  
• C:\Windows\SysWoW64\drivers\mbamswissarmy.sys
  

Please let us know how it turns out.

Thanks

[sschorr]

The same performance hit is happening on our 32 bit Win7 PCs as well

[sendhere]

MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) has been known to have performance issues with MBAM if the exclusions aren't done a certain way. I'd recommend excluding them per the tutorial located here, just be sure to adapt the file locations to your version of Windows accordingly. Here's a complete list of MBAM's files and folders in a 64 bit operating system:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbam.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamgui.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamservice.exe
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\zlib.dll
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbam.dll
  
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\mbamext.dll
  
• C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\rules.ref
  
• C:\Windows\System32\drivers\mbam.sys
  
• C:\Windows\SysWoW64\drivers\mbamswissarmy.sys
  

Please let us know how it turns out.

Thanks

Thanks for the advice. I applied these exclusions in Microsoft Anti Spyware, but unfortunately the issue remains unchanged. I rebooted a couple of times to no avail.

[exile360]

Do you still get the performance problems with Website Blocking disabled? You can test by right-clicking the Malwarebytes' tray icon and unchecking Website Blocking. I ask simply because I know some users have had issues in Vista and 7 (including myself) with that particular feature causing high CPU usage and slow download speeds (something I've confirmed through testing to be fixed in the upcoming 1.46).

If that does not fix the issue then I'd recommend contacting support at support@malwarebytes.org to let them assist you with more detailed troubleshooting if you are willing.

Thanks

[noknojon]

@ exile360 and others -

My MSE seems to take higher usage as it starts its evening scan - I can hear it start the scan - MBAM runs at about the same as always -

As MSE is always running it will always have some extra usage when another program runs -

Maybe your MSE or other A/V is the one causing the problem , not MBAM -

Thanks -

[noknojon]

mbam service is still slowing down my computer drastically. I'm using Win7 x64, G-Data antivirus 2010 and Immunet. I set the exclusions in both programs

@ dv986 -

You are running 2 antivirus programs together - Free Immunet ?? and (I assume) paid G Data antivirus 2010 ??- I am sure these 2 will cause a conflict -

That will cause more usage and one should be removed now - The free Immunet is the one to take out -

The reasons for more exclusions are that MBAM 1.45 is now a stronger more active malware fighter than previous editions -

Thank You -

[noknojon]

@ sschorr -

The same performance hit is happening on our 32 bit Win7 PCs as well

Are you using MSE or another A/V program -

Also do you run any firewall except from Microsoft -

Thanks -