BD Total security slowed down laptop considerably

I've had BD Total Security installed on my laptop for years with no issues. however, recently it has slowed things down almost to a standstill - the laptop is virtually unusable at times. I uninstalled BD and the laptop worked fine - so I know BD is the cause. I have removed all other antivirus programs and issue persists. I have uninstalled and reinstalled BD, still get the issue.

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Gjoksi

Hello.

Check out these articles:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/31856/

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/87461/

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/3766/

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/118109/

Regards.

antivirustales

Same here! BD used to run fine for years, but lately it's been killing my system performance. Tried reinstalling too, but no luck. Had to remove it just to get my laptop working again. Something’s definitely off with recent updates.

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

From which version did you start noticing this slowdown? Has this happened after a significant change on your PC, for example hardware update, system restore, installation of specific programs, major Windows update or anything similar, or was it just a Bitdefender update that has suddenly started to cause this behavior?

I think another question that arises here is when exactly does the slowdown occur? Does it persist constantly, or does it only occur when certain programs are running, or when you carry specific activities and tasks on the device? Because I think there's always more to the story here, and depending on the system configuration, available resources and number of programs and apps in use or running in the background, the antivirus is constantly changing its behavior, adjusting to the multitude of things that may happen simultaneously on the PC. And yes, in some cases, especially when resources may be a concern, this may result in a noticeable slowdown.

If you ask me, I think it's debatable, because there are so many variables involved here. Like the articles above point out, it's generally agreed upon that some devices may encounter a slowdown after installing an antivirus. And depending on their configuration and processor, this slowdown can be prominent or not. As per the system requirements description, system performance may also be affected on devices that have old generation CPUs. If that's not the case, we move on to other possible causes or things that may interefere with the proper functionality of the antivirus, or the antivirus itself may slow down a system that is already in a bad state. The thing is, when someone reports a slowdown or unexpected antivirus behaviour, you never really know how healthy or compatible their system is, or why this actually happens, without taking a closer look..

There have been a number of discussions on this topic in the community over time, and so far, we have learned that slowdown can occur if other security solutions are installed, if the device is already infected, if unwanted programs run in the background, taking up disk space and memory, if the hard disk drives are too fragmented, if data is corrupted, if hardware is obsolete or faulty, if the device is damaged in any other way, etc.

Of course, I do not exclude certain antivirus behaviour in conjuction with other tasks on the device and things that may require optimization from time to time, like I said earlier, but this is where the updates come in and I'm sure improvements are made with each new build, so that the antivirus can become lighter on computer resources. And this means that it's exaclty the opposite, the updates should fix any known performance issues, not create them..

Now, if the behaviour persists with no apparent cause, I think it should be further investigated by the more experienced technical engineers who know how to interpret the logs and understand a pattern when they see one.

I for example, don't get such slowdowns. I never have. However, I think we must keep in mind that not all devices are built the same, they don't function in the same way, some may have more resources than others, some are better configured than others and Bitdefender does not warrant that the solution will meet everyone's requirements, especially due to the need to operate in so many unique environments, so its performance cannot always be predicted. There are of course some high performance standards to which it operates and like I mentioned earlier, the software is constantly optimized and can also adapt to the environment in which it operates to some degree, but corner-cases will always exist..

Thank you for taking the time to read my long post. 🙂

Regards,

Alex

Eman7

Same thing here. Ever since the Late July/Early August Update it's been slowing down my games. At first I thought it was the Nvidia App and the XBOX Game Overlay. Until I uninstalled both programs. Then I started noticing my frames dropping again by 1-10 frames dramatically, and the only way was for me to temporarily turn off the BD Total Security. I've had no problems, before used game profile, and had every protection on. I'm going to try the troubleshooting steps hopefully there's a change.

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

Try the Game Profile as well and check if the gaming experience improves:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2066/

Regards

Eman7

Good morning @Alexandru_BD
I'm going to have to run a serious of tests with the different profiles and settings, here's what I ran into so far:

When the Antivirus is turned on with Game Profile and Movie Profile. As in Bitdefender Shield is turned on with every property below it: (Scan only applications - reset advanced settings) my games since that July update at started having their frames jitter lower than the stable 60 FPS.

The issue also continues to occur if I have cryptomining protection on and all the protections up to antispam.

When Bitdefender Shield only was turned off (but the other protection features i.e cryptomining, firewall, antispam, etc were turned on) the frames got slightly better, but it wasn't stable.

It wasn't until I had to turn off BD Shield and Protection features did the games go back to a normal stable framerate.

Since I've been using Bitdefender I've always used game profile and I never had this issue. Due to time and other work, it's going to take a while to see what the root cause of this issue is (my hunch is saying it has something to do with the scans in bitdefender shield, but I also have to see which protection feature is not meshing well with the new NVIDIA driver or games update. It's baffled me.

Alexandru_BD

I understand.. I would have a look at Advanced Threat Defense as well. This module continuously monitors the applications and processes running on your computer. It monitors suspicious activities such as copying files to important Windows operating system folders, executing or injecting code into other processes, multiplying them, changing the Windows registry, or installing drivers. I think its activity can be quite intense during gaming, and it's well known that this module has caused some problems with various games in the past (but these have been resolved punctually).

I would also recommend adding the game .exe file as an exception for this module. You'll find the procedure here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2393/

And exclude its relevant files and folders from the antivirus scan as well. This could also help.

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/13427/

If the slowdown persists, then I think it's best to contact Bitdefender Support, as they can resort to more advanced troubleshooting steps, gather logs from the affected machine, and advise accordingly.
I'm confident this can be resolved, it's probably just a mix of different settings you need to apply, depending on what's actually causing the slowdown, but also on the device health and system configuration.

Should you require further assistance, head to the link below to get in touch with the Support engineers:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/help/

State your contact reason / choose request category, then choose from the available contact channels, chat, phone and email/ticket. Chat would be the fastest way to reach them.

I hope this helps.

Regards