Svchost Busy During Antivirus Scan

During a full system scan by BitDefender, Microsoft's svchost.exe is the busiest task, consuming 29-41% of the CPU cycles. BitDefender's uiscan.exe consumes up to 13% of the cycles every few minutes.

Does the BitDefender scan engine run as a component of svchost?

The scan took 1 hr & 10 minutes. After the scan, the total CPU time (as reported by Process Explorer) was

1:50:17 System Idle

0:40:35 svchost

0:05:30 System

0:05:12 BitDefender's uiscan

(other tasks -- I'm not listing them here)

0:00:06 BitDefender's vssserv.exe

I'm running BitDefender Antivirus 2008 on Windows XP Pro

-- tdt3

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Comments

alexcrist

Hello tdt3,

Yes, BitDefender Threat Scanner is a service that is run by an instance of svchost.

uiscan.exe is just the interface of the manual scan (the actual scan is made by Threat Scanner).

The same situation appears also on realtime scanning. When there are many files accessed (like when you install something), you'll also notice an instance of svchost using more resources (the same Threat Scanner).

Cris.

tdt3

Thanks, Cris

I was curious, so I did a little further checking. In the WinXP Pro command window, I ran the following command:

tasklist /svc

and among the instances of svchost I found:

svchost.exe 2836 scan

This was not there when I previously ran "tasklist /svc" before installing BitDefender AntiVirus 2008. This was present during and after a scan.

Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services shows:

BitDefender Threat Scanner Started Manual

Does it make sense that the Startup Type is "Manual"?

right click | properties shows the path to executable as:

C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe -kbdx

-- tdt3

alexcrist

Yes, everything is normal.

The scan service is BitDefender Threat Scanner and it's OK to be set on Manual.

Cris.

tdt3

Thank you, Cris

-- tdt3