Bitdefender makes my system slow to a crawl

Flieg

At apparently random intervals Bitdefender accesses my hard disk so much that other applications become [xxx is not responding]. The disk usage light goes to solid white and the Task monitor shows that disk usage is at 100%. At the same time, the actual data transfer rate is low. I presume that it's doing a scan, but it does it several times a day and I have found no way to control it.

Is there any way to reduce the priority of the bitdefender process so that when it runs it doesn't clog the system? It's bad on my system (specs below) but it almost completely stops my wife's system which only has 4GB of memory.

So, can someone tell me how to configure my system and BD so that it doesn't do that? Reducing the priority of the task would probably be sufficient if that's possible.

Thanks in advance.

My system: Dell XPS8900, Intel i7-6700 3.4 GHz 8GB of memory. Win 10 Home 21H1 (build 19043.1586) 2 HD disks, but only C:, the system disk, is being exercised. It is a 1TB disk (Seagate Model   ST1000DM003-1SB102) with 350 GB in use.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Flieg and welcome to the Community!

First, I would recommend checking one of the following:

Unused programs

Any computer has programs or applications that are not used. And many unwanted programs run in the background, taking up disk space and memory. If you do not use a program, uninstall it. This is also valid for any other pre-installed software or trial software you forgot to remove.

If you suspect a program or an application to be an essential part of your operating system, do not remove it and contact Bitdefender Technical Support for assistance.

Data Corruption, hard disk fragmentation

There could be too many invalid registry keys left in your Windows Registry or your hard disk drives are too fragmented.

Cleaning the Windows Registry can improve the performance of your system. Also, file fragmentation slows down file access and decreases system performance. Running the Disk Defragmenter can improve the performance of your system. You can find the steps to run Disk Defragmenter in this article.

Secondly, you may customize profiles that will help optimize the manner in which the system resources are being used. Bitdefender Profiles assign more system resources to the running applications by temporarily modifying protection settings and adjusting system configuration. Consequently, the system impact on your activity is minimized.

You can find more information in the article below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2062/

Let us know if the information was helpful.

Stay safe.

Flieg

@Alexandru_BD -- The disk is defragmented on a regular (daily) basis as is the usual setting for Win10 Home. so that's not the problem.

I downloaded and ran the Microsoft Process Monitor during a clog-up. Almost all of the disk access was by Bitdefender. What it looked like, since there was almost no data transfer rate, is that it was looking at each file just to see if it was there. (?) I regularly attempt to get rid of background programs and most services are set to activate only when needed by a real program. Most of the rest is things like Cortana and My Phone which I wish I could get rid of.

The only system resource being over-used is disk access and Bitdefender is the cause. Memory and cpu are being used at normal levels, nowhere near 50%, often below 10%.

I'm not sure how dead end codes in the System Registry would result in excess disk access, but I have read many articles that say that System Registry "Cleaners" are not worth the electrons used to run them in terms of system performance. If you can recommend a specific one that you have used, however, I'm willing to try it.

I will look at the "Profiles" file and see if I can understand it, since almost any time a program involves "profiles" they seem to be assuming that the user has dedicated activities or that there are multiple users. What I'd like is simple instructions on how to deal with an initialization file rather than "profiles." (I know that in many ways it is similar, but I understand initialization files. :D

Thanks for your welcome and I will give the profiles section a look.

Flieg

@Alexandru_BD -- It would be helpful if the "profiles" gave you a list of the programs that would trigger them. Really, really, helpful. Also, it would appear that they might not be useful to me since the trigger is based on what programs are running and what they do is turn off certain aspects of BD. I run Open Office continuously, ditto for Thunderbird, and Firefox is running on a regular basis. I don't want to stop Bitdefender from doing its job, I just want BD to be in the background rather than taking the foreground. Changing the priority of the tasks would be the obvious way to go.

If it could trigger on a lack of immediate activity, that would be nice, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Flieg,

Concerning the disk usage, I think the engineers might have to take a closer look and maybe request some logs from you as well. I would recommend contacting the Technical Support Teams, since more information might be required to troubleshoot this. You can get in touch with our engineers by choosing one of the contact methods available here:

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

In regards to the profiles, you have the option to activate them automatically, based on your activity or running applications. You can also customize the profiles by adding the applications in the list, in order to trigger a specific profile:

Best regards.

bwilliams

I'm having this issue too, on two different computers. Did you get it solved?

jdolan01

I'm having this issue too, brand new install of Windows 10 Home on brand new Lenovo T14 laptop. BitDefender System Scan hangs after about 5 minutes and never completes with Disk going to 100% in Task Manager.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @bwilliams, @jdolan01,

The scan time depends on the number of files stored on the device and it is not linear. Do you have any other security solution installed on the same PC? There can be multiple possible reasons behind this and my advice would be to have one of our engineers connect remotely to your machine to find the root cause.

You can get in touch with our engineers by choosing one of the contact methods available here:

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

Let us know how it goes.