I Think Bitdefender's Update May Be Causing Some Major Slow Down For Me

ShinigamiKiba

My specs:

i7 3820

16GB RAM

GTX680 2GB

C Drive - SSD Verbatim 2.5" 128GB

Secondary HDD - regular 1TB HDD

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate - regularly updated

Security:

Main Security Program: BitDefender Internet Security - fully updated

Second Opinion Programs that are NOT Active and do NOT cause conflicts with BitDefender:

Malware Bytes

Super Antispyware

Hitman Pro

^ All fully updated. all of them set to manual updating and none of them are active or do any realtime protection so they don't conflict with BitDefender.

Browsers I use: Google Chrome and FireFox - with no ******, both have AdBlock Plus and BitDefender's extension active

I take very good care of my system and I've been running the same installation of Windows 7 without any problems or malware issues.

However, there is one issue I couldn't pinpoint the source of, a strange lag of the explorer process when my internet connection would slow down to a crawl or die out, in order to resume working normally I have to unplug the ethernet cable and after a minute at most or usually less when whatever it is that's looking for a connection and lagging up my entire system, right down to making opening folders seem like opening web sites on a 56k connection realizes there is no more internet connection so everything resumes functioning normally.

The only two ways to get out of this state are to unplug the ethernet cable or hope the connection would fix itself.

I had a very similar issue before I got BitDefender Internet Security and it would usually occur when AVAST, which I had before would download and install updates.

Regardless, I decided to check my system for malware with the following:

Super Anti Spyware - Free version

Malware Bytes - Full version

Hitman Pro - evolution period, I plan on buying a license for it too

Combo Fix - didn't find anything, just deleted my Chrome settings which wasn't a big deal

All of them gave me a perfect clean bill of health, except Hitman Pro which did detect some malware that I got rid of immediately.

So for the most part, aside from some tracking cookies my system is clean and well maintained and performs amazingly well when the slowdown/lag doesn't occur.

In order to make sure it wasn't a hardware related issue I booted up in safe mode without networking and saw my system working absolutely flawlessly.

Using or booting up the computer without an ethernet cable plugged in also yielded perfect results with the system functioning absolutely flawlessly for hours on end.

Yet despite all that I still had to deal with the terribly annoying lag when my system was connected to the internet and my connection would start dying or slowing down to a crawl at least 2-3 times a day.

Yesterday I finally decided to disable BitDefender's auto update because I remembered that I had a imilar issue with AVAST's updates before I got BitDefender and strangely enough, the lag didn't occur until hours later I re-enabled auto update just to see what would happen.

I disabled it again and sure enough I could use my system perfectly for hours.

The auto update feature is still disabled, however I noticed that when I download an update manually by clicking the download button if the update is too big the lag starts to happen and it gets worse as the download for the update progresses, it gets especially bad right after the download has finished when I assume BitDefender is installing the update or something.

It takes a couple minutes for things to resume working normally, however now I see this happening only and only when I update BitDefender, so it's safe to assume that it somehow overloads my connection with its update process and I'm not sure if I'm using the correct term here, but it seems to be causing an accidental DDOS attack or some such which causes my entire system to lag and the connection to die.

ShinigamiKiba

I'd also like to add that despite the update issues, I don't intend to not using BitDefender Internet Security because it's hands down the best main security solution I've used and I have used quite a few across different computers.

It's non intrusive, very stable, detects quite a lot of stuff and whatever little it misses is generally covered by my other tools so it's no big deal.

My only issue is the update causing lag and making my entire windows hang for a few minutes after its done downloading and during the download process, but that seems to have been resolved by disabling auto update and updating only when I don't have work to do.

I'd still like to know what could be possibly causing this and a potential solution though.

ShinigamiKiba

Just to confirm that with auto update disabled my system functions flawlessly

I still keep my BitDefender updated, it's just that I do it when I'm not using the computer.

I strongly suggest anyone who has slowdown issues with BitDefender to simply disable the auto update feature and update their program manually.

Still as I said I would like to figure out what's causing this.

ShinigamiKiba

I think it's only slowing down when it's trying to update something online. Have you checked if this happens say, the while 12 hours?

I haven't had any issues since I disabled auto update

my system works flawlessly

I now update when I get off the computer, so it does its thing and by the time I'm back it's all good.

The lag happens after every update, especially the larger ones.

I tested it and made 100% sure that it only occurs when the program updates, be that automatic or manual.

Turning Automatic Update off fixed my system just fine.

I haven't experienced any problems since I disabled it and update when I don't use the computer, and believe me I use my computer a lot for both work and gaming.

Jackie44

I am having the same issue on my i5 , it slows down considerably while updating but otherwise it is working fine. I think it is a common thing so we do not have to worry much about it.

kaplov

I am having the same issue on my i5 , it slows down considerably while updating but otherwise it is working fine. I think it is a common thing so we do not have to worry much about it.

It may not be something to worry about, but it's still rather annoying. I for one am going to cancel AutoUpdate.

Drewie

Same here, I have been turning off the Auto Update function and doing a few manual updates through the day, with it on it becomes very annoying when I am in the middle of doing something and I grind to a halt whilst it performs an update, it really takes over the system and everything becomes so slow the PC becomes useless, with it turned off the PC runs fine with no issues at all, it just seems that the Auto Update seems to be extremely heavy on resources.