Bitdefender may be causing my PC to slow down / freeze up

hi all

I now think Bitdefender is the reason or big part of reason my PC is slowing down and even freezing up.

i read Archi dice's post about BD using up resources, and that prompted me to post this, though my issues may be different from his. his seems to be Bitdefenders resource use, where mine may be compatibility issues as well.(not sure really)

when i first got BD (bitdefender) it was working great, and i had no issues with my computers speed and functionality. but since march things have slowly grown progressively worse.

Symptoms now are as follows-

when i first turn on my PC its sluggish, but after a hour or so it becomes even slower
the longer the PC is turned on the worse it gets, programs start being difficult to open even BD sometimes wont open when i click on the widget.
the more hours the PC stays left on the worse it gets to a point where the computer freezes up, and i cant even shut it off with windows start icon button lower left... i have to physically hold down the mechanical start button to shut off the PC...
even if all i do is turn on the PC and walk away from it and dont use it, when i come back an hour or two later its slowed down and sometimes feezing up all by itself.
it seems time related, the longer the PC stays on for , the slower and worse it gets.

it takes hours for BD to do a full system scan. yet the quick scan seems to function ok, it timed at ten munites, and the optimizer tool still takes ten seconds,,,that is when BD has not frozen up .

i have tried for a few weeks looking at other possibilities other than BD for the slow down, and have tried removing some unused programs as per BD sites info,,, and have tried removing old security programs..

removing old programs be they security or other i find is frustrating, because as you pointed out to Archi dice in his post, using the add/remove tool in windows or the uninstall prompt that comes with the programs still don't remove it all, they still leave stuff buried somewhere in your PC,,

I had once used a demo of malewarebytes, and removed it using its own uninstall function... only to find out by using treesizefree that it still had a folder in my pc with files in it...

on Bitdefender website i yesterday downloaded your tool "Autoruns" to view things that could be removed or stopped, but im afraid of removing things or shutting them off since i know nothing about some of the programs Autoruns listed and i may make matters worse.

and thats the problem me a none computer geek who doesnt know what these programs are or do , i can use treesize free, or your program "autoruns" to remove stuff or stop it from running, but its like putting a gun in the hands of a drunk blindfolded monkey, i just dont know what many of these programs are or do and i will probably mess things up more.

I like your suggestion to Archie about doing a reinstall of Bitdefender, i will try that, but unfortunately that is not just plug and play, hitting the uninstall button in BD does not remove all of BD as you pointed out to Archie,,, i will have to follow up that with the complicated processes you instructed archie to do , to totally remove all of BD files... what a pain...

gee why cant software makers put all the stuff in just one folder in one place so when we hit uninstall it actually does just that and uninstalls the whole thing at once and not leaves stuff laying hidden all over on our computers... gee wiz :(

i will try the reinstall of Bitdefender and see if that helps. if not next thing will be to wipe the PC and reinstall the windows back up disc, because their is no way a newbie like me is going to go thru all the files on a PC and try and figure out what can be removed or shut down without negatively impacting functionality of the entire system....

i wonder if possibly the issues are with the one click optimizer removing things it should not have removed, not that i would know what should stay and what should go, im not a programmer, so when the optimizer asks i just hit the optimize button and hope it knows what its doing.

also the firewall stops alot of things, and i wonder if they should of been allowed,,, when i first got bitdefender the firewall asked me if i wanted to block some program with a odd name so i hit block,,i later found out that program was a bitdefender program..lol.. so this could be a part of my issues here too. so many programs with weird names i have no idea what to block or not,,, maybe some need to access the net to keep my pc functioning well. ???

my system is -

windows 7 home premium

service pack 1

dell, inspiron n7110

intel core i7-2670

cpu@ 2.20 ghz

ram 8gb

64bit operating system

Are any other new Bitdefender users noticing time related slow down issues too ?,, the longer your pc is on the slower it gets ?

i used to use other brand of security software for years never had this conflict with the other software on my PC. the only difference now seems to be since installing Bitdefender.

thanks for any advice, or links to any info i can use.

cheers.

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Comments

Gjoksi

Hello.

Here is a screenshot from my laptop's task manager, that i've just got:

Laptop: Asus X551CA

Purchased: April 25, 2014

Specs: Intel Core i3-3217U 1.8GHz, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4GB DDR3

The only hardware change i made: a few years ago switched from 500GB HDD to 120GB SATA-III SSD

On August 22, 2020 switched by clean install from Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit to Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit.

I'm a Bitdefender Total Security user since 2017.

Since then, Bitdefender never had any impact on the performance of my laptop.

As for the full system scan, from my personal experience, the System Scan is 30 - 50 files per second and it takes 25 - 30 minutes to scan the whole system of 95 GB, including the Windows files, program files, data files (documents, pistures, videos) etc.

To do that, Open your Bitdefender program, go to Protection -> Antivirus -> Open -> Scans -> System Scan, click on the three dots ••• button on the right next to System Scan, click on "Edit", change the "Scan task priority" to "High", click "Next" and "Save".

Also, do the same steps for "Quick Scan", change the "Scan task priority" to "High".

For uninstalling the Bitdefender program, use the Uninstall Tool:

https://www.bitdefender.com/links/uninstall_consumer_paid.html

After the uninstall process is done, you could use other programs (like CCleaner, Glary Utilities, etc.) to scan the system for any leftovers from Bitdefender (like files, registry keys, ets.) and finally do a system restart.

Regards.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Clapton and thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us.

While there are several factors that can contribute to a slowdown of the machine, more information is needed to find the root cause. Depending on the system configuration and the active applications, the background scan might affect the computer performance, for example. The system configuration and the applications differ from one computer to another, yet the mechanism is the same: there are applications or system processes that continuously access the resources and Bitdefender monitors this activity. After installing a security software, the computer will slightly slow down, which to a certain degree is normal.

However, if you notice a significant slowdown after installing your Bitdefender protection, there are a couple of things to check:

Running two security solutions will cause system slowdowns and conflicts between them. This might lead into apps being blocked without notice/intention. Having more than one security solution installed on the same PC will also cause incompatibility issues, and the normal action of either one of them is not guaranteed. This is why we recommend our users to remove any other antivirus programs they may use before installing Bitdefender.
If your machine/operating system does not meet the system requirements, the computer will become sluggish, especially when multiple applications are running at the same time.
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.
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. Note: 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.
Last but not least, your system speed and its general behavior can also be affected by malware. Spyware, viruses, Trojans, and adware all take a toll on your computer’s performance. Make sure to scan your system periodically, at least once a week. It is recommended to use the Bitdefender System Scan because it scans for all types of malware threatening the security of your system.

To start the System Scan, follow these steps:

• open the Bitdefender window

• access System Scan

• follow the wizard steps

In regards to scanning, the speed of a System Scan depends on many factors such as system specifications, large volumes of data, the computer resources are in use by another software, it’s the first scan since installing Bitdefender and, most importantly, the number of archives & over-compressed files/backups. With every system scan, Bitdefender will index the files that have already been scanned and the scan time will greatly decrease.

To speed up a System Scan, if system resources are not a concern, the following solution may be considered: run the scan in high priority mode. This will instruct Bitdefender to compete for system resources on equal terms to other programs and decrease the time needed for the scan process to finish.

1. Click Protection on the navigation menu on the Bitdefender interface.

2. In the Antivirus panel, click Open.

3. Click the ••• button next to System Scan, then choose Edit.

4. In the Manage Scans window, use the drop-down menu to change Scan task priority from Low to High.

5. Click Next, then click Save.

6. Press Run Scan and wait for the System Scan to finish.

From my point of view and in this particular scenario, I think the first step would be to upgrade the operating system and install Windows 10. You will definitely see an improvement in performance. Although Windows 7 is still supported, the device will perform better with an antivirus paired with a newer Windows version.

This is also recommended because Bitdefender will continue to provide antimalware support to Windows 7 users only until January 14th, 2023. As technologies and threats evolve, Bitdefender continues to proactively develop and shape its solution set. The resulting new solutions and feature modifications often lead to a need to discontinue older software revisions and products. More information is available at the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/32549/

Best regards

Clapton

hi and thank you to both of you for the advice.

i did a scan last knight but fell asleep with the PC on, ,,,results of BD's log file are as follows

Detailed Scan Summary

Basic

all things = 0 (no infections, suspicious, or resolved items, found etc etc...)

Advanced

scan time = 05:06:02
scanned items = 1429763
files per second = 77
skipped items = 51506
password protected = 8
scanned archives = 392
scanned boot sectors = 31
scanned processes = 4014
scanned registry keys = 10749
all other items on the advanced log list were = 0

I did have the priority settings on High for both full scan and quick scan ....

Gjoksi awesome thanks for your task manager results, i am comparing yours and mine,,,very interesting... at this moment im getting this reading in my task manager

Memory(private working set)

bdservicehost = .............................................401,620 k
bdservicehost= .................................................20,036 k
Bitdefender Agent = ...........................................4,316 k
Bitdefender agent = .........................................14,336 k
Bitdefender Main Interface = .......................190,592 k
Bitdefender Network OS Helper Process = ......9,824 k
Bitdefender redliine update = ............................6,440 k
Bitdefender redline update = .............................2,360 k
Bitdefender Update service =.......................... 12,728 k
Bitdefender Vpn App = .......................................9,196 k
Bitdefender Vpn Service =............................... 30,308 k
Bitdefender Wallet Agent = ..............................12,272 k

CPU

at the moment my task manager shows all bitdefener cpu usage = 0

curious that some things above in my task manager list like "bdservicehost", "Agent" and "redline" have two of each,,, is that normal ?

Gjoksi its seems my results are not too far off yours, leaves me to further think that maybe its some software that starts up in the background later that is maybe conflicting and maybe that software is not on at that moment ?

Alexandru you may be right about windows 10 upgrade (you probably are 😥 )... but i think i might like to spend the money (when i get some extra money ) towards a new pc that comes with windows ten already installed, and maybe move my bitdefender over to the new computer, and just use a basic free antivirus on this older Dell computer when that happens..

i did a DNS flush last night as i read on your site in a bitdefender blog on how to reduce packet loss while gaming online , went online to find out how to do it,, wonder if that helped improve things today...so far things are not freezing up, and i also did a BD update too .

for now i will try to remedy the present situation with this older laptop ... i will keep looking for programs that i am 100 percent sure i know what they are(like things i installed myself over the years) and remove them and see if that resolves the possibility of a software conflict . i wont touch anything if i dont recognize its name or if it looks like its system related...fingers crossed little by little chip away at it and see if things get better :)

thanks to you's both for the help , especially Gjoksi for showing me what a normal task manager BD result should look like that was helpful for comparison thanks.

i have to go now, ,,, will check back soon as i can and let you know how its working.

edit note ... also before i go it just occurred to ask,, regarding conflict between security software programs running at same time... does Windows Firewall and Defender software automatically shut off or stop once we install Bitdefender or do we have to go in and do that ourselfs ????

Scott

Hi @Clapton

Yes, on install, BD should disable Windows security in place of its own. But I always like to check, just to be sure :)

Could you post a reply, please, so you can get to 10 comments and hopefully get to level 2, so you get some of your fantastic music videos posted :) :)

Flexx

Kindly also have a look at below stated links:

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

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

Regards

Alexandru_BD

Hi @Clapton,

Thank you for the insightful and comprehensive reply. I really hope things get better and I'm glad if the information found here was helpful.

Cheers

Clapton

Quote - scott ..... "Could you post a reply, please, so you can get to 10 comments and hopefully get to level 2, so you get some of your fantastic music videos posted :) :) "

sure scott , will do :)

Scott

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/313249#Comment_313249

You're now good to go :)

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/313208#Comment_313208

Clapton

thank you mrmirakhur

i clicked your links, will copy their info into my notepad so i can refer to them... thanks :)

remember_username

I just uninstalled it today. It interferes with tons of shopping platforms. It causes errors during payment and checkout.

What settings should I change to solve this? It has tons of checkboxes and features that I don't understand.

Disabling everything improved the performance of my browser, the usual speed of Google's translation has been restored after uninstalling the product, and I can also send screenshots to messaging apps after removing the software.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @remember_username and thanks for joining us here.

In the event you are encountering such errors on multiple platforms, I would recommend contacting the Technical Support Teams, as more information might be required to troubleshoot this. The Bitdefender solution includes several layers of protection and security modules so it's important to know exactly which one is interfering with the platforms in question, to provide accurate troubleshooting steps.

You can also temporarily disable all modules in Bitdefender security solutions for Windows for troubleshooting purposes and this will usually reveal the culprit. Try to access the platforms after each deactivation and remember to re-enable the modules you have initially turned off. You can find a step by step guide at the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/28557/

Should you require further assistance, you can get in touch with the Bitdefender engineers by choosing one of the contact channels available here:

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

Choose from the available contact channels, chat, phone and email/ticket. Chat would be the fastest way to reach them.

Let us know how it goes and please do share your findings with the community, this way we can help other members that may encounter this behavior in the future.

Regards,

Alex

Svender

I'm encountering the same issue. I thought it was a hard drive issue, CPU or RAM but the Performance tab in Task Manager shows nothing unusual. All are nowhere near being maxed out yet the computer runs slow. My desktop takes forever to load, when I click any app or File Explorer, it takes a couple minutes to finally pop up or become responsive. Once an app is running, it runs fine. The browser will open but then the tabs also take a couple minutes before they are responsive. Again, no huge performance hits are shown in Task Manager. I had no issues for a couple months after I had reinstalled Windows 10(AMD Ryzen 1500, AMD Radeon 5700 XT *GB video card, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB Samsung EVO plus SSD) and Bitdefender Total Security. Just one day the computer started loading slower.

After seeing no errors, nothing in Performance tab and could find nothing in the Event Viewer, I decided to uninstall Bitdefender. It was like my computer was new again. I reinstalled Bitdefender again and computer seemed fine but after a reboot, right back to the same issue. Luckily I did not renew my subscription so it looks like I will let it run out in a couple months or just buy something else. I have no competing anti-virus or malware programs running and Windows Defender is off. The only possible explanation since I have installed no software as of late is possibly some Windows updates.

Liobet

Hi Svender,

Welcome aboard !

I believe in miracles.

Everytime I switch on my computer and it works... it is a miracle ! 😉

To be serious, there are so many reasons for a OS to break down, any software or physical issue could do that.

Check the system as well (the SFC is a useful gimmick):

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

Cheers,

LeCroissant

I too have had this problem - computer simply freezing for no reason, usually involving Windows Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Word or Outlook - although it may be simply that those are the programs I use the most. It's particularly noticeable for the first 10 minutes after boot up, and also if, having closed a program by mistake, I try to reopen it shortly afterwards. The behaviour improved with "Advanced Threat Defence" turned off. I ran the scans suggested in the knowledge base article https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/87461/ and then reported to customer service and spent a long time doing all the things they asked: uploading log files, running chkdsk etc and finally doing a complete uninstall and reinstall of Bitdefender. That improved things for about a day, and since then back to just being intermittently very annoying. My PC has good hardware (Ryzen 7 5800x, 32 GB RAM, a WD Black nVME HDD) and I keep Windows up to date - well-written code just shouldn't have this problem on a modern machine like this. It's simply unacceptable. This morning, with Acrobat Pro already open and running, it has just taken nearly one minute to open another tab for a one page pdf file, and I have had it. I thought I'd pop up on here to say goodbye to Bitdefender, probably forever, and to warn others contemplating installing this program that this is an issue reported by multiple users that apparently has no solution.

[Deleted User]

@LeCroissant ,

Like the vast majority of BD users, I have no such issues. What is important to recognize is that each computer is individual once in the hands of the user. With the many millions of computers running BD, these Forums would be overwhelmed by complaints if this was a widespread issue.

Speaking for myself (I am not BD staff - I am just a longtime customer), I would be checking my OS integrity with the System File Checker and with DISM. I would also be checking the integrity of my main OS drive where BD resides.

There are SO MANY possible causes of what you are experiencing. BD might just be the "canary in the mine," alerting you to other issues with your computer. BD presumes that your OS is fully functional. You might also check Event Logs for possible errors. There are also all kinds of strange problems that arise when people use Windows "tweaking" apps. I am not saying that you do, but it is another possibility.

If you are leaving BD, I am sorry to see you go, but that is your choice. Good luck with whatever security software you choose, as is your right. It is YOUR computer.

Have a great day.

Regards,

Phil

LeCroissant

@garioch7

It's extremely kind of you to leave a comment and I appreciate the time you took on your defence of BD, although curious as to why you did this. I had already done all the things (and more) that you suggested. The first suggestion from customer support was to turn bits of BD off and to see if we could isolate the problem. It appeared to be the Antivirus and, in particular, Advanced Threat Defence that made the issue likely to occur. The event logs and later the system logs submitted to BD found no issues. Chkdisk found nothing. The System File Checker sfc found some orphaned files and cleaned them up, but it didn't help. DISM also found a few files it didn't like, but replacing them made no difference. Eventually customer support suggested an uninstall-reinstall process, which also made no difference. I've never used a tweaking app. Since removing BD I have had no further issues. I really don't quite know what you mean by saying that BD "presumes your OS is fully functional" and if you have something definite in mind, please explain. If, however, you merely mean that Windows is a strange OS where weird things can happen for reasons that are hard to fathom, then I of course agree. My suspicion is, rather than being rare as you suggest, that my problem is quite common but that many users either don't notice it or can't be bothered to make a fuss. As you say, it's my PC and I'm very happy to have it back.

Scott

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/332132#Comment_332132

From your post:

My suspicion is, rather than being rare as you suggest, that my problem is quite common but that many users either don't notice it or can't be bothered to make a fuss. As you say, it's my PC and I'm very happy to have it back.

I agree. I tend to think that most of 60-70% of Bitdefender users? are the set-it-and-forget-it type, as this is not a Geeks delight AV like ESET or Kaspersky is, so I don't think they consider to check the processes and the memory used and are just happy to email the kids, and grandkids, shop on Amazon, etc. It's more of the geeks who look and notice these things and post them here, especially if there's a total meltdown.

My resolve on my Windows 11 PC, was the same as yours.

From this thread:

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/82368/my-bdservicehost-uses-too-much-of-my-cpu-and-memory-all-the-time-how-can-i-fix-it

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/332043#Comment_332043

Kind regards.

[Deleted User]

@LeCroissant ,

Thank you for your reply. I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that "many users either don't notice it or can't be bothered to make a fuss," even if @Scott agrees with you.

I agree. I tend to think that most of 60-70% of Bitdefender users? are the set-it-and-forget-it type, as this is not a Geeks delight AV like ESET or Kaspersky is, so I don't think they consider to check the processes and the memory used and are just happy to email the kids, and grandkids, shop on Amazon, etc. It's more of the geeks who look and notice these things and post them here, especially if there's a total meltdown.

A solution that did work for me when on my Windows 11 PC BD hit the 750MB of RAM mark, was to uninstall it and use a different AV, in which this laptop is now as happy as a clam.

According to his statistics derived from an uncited source, 30% - 40%% of BD users must be "geeks." Given the millions of BD customers, that would still be millions of "geeks" who haven't noticed the issue; OR, more likely, don't have that issue. I am a "geek" by his definition, so his assumption presumes that I would notice such issues. I can't notice something that is not happening on my devices.

I have no intention of pursuing this. I am happy with BD. You and @Scott may prefer other AV solutions, which is your right. Let us all stay safe in cyberspace. Signing off from this topic.

Have a great day.

Regards,

Phil

Scott

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/332141#Comment_332141

I don't know, but maybe it's because I've been using this AV on and off since v10, and have tracked with this forum and its history over the years, including the previous forum. So my statistics may tend to be by the seat of my pants, of who and what's been posted. So as with you, I'm signing off on this topic as well :)

Cheers, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, Phil :)

LeCroissant

@garioch7

It is of course your right to sign off. But from my point of view, you've left just when things might have got interesting. You haven't explained your motives for being such an assiduous defender of Bitdefender. You haven't provided any evidence for your assertion that "millions" of Bitdefender customers experience no issues. You haven't explained what you meant when you said that BD "presumes your OS is fully functional". You haven't been able to explain (and neither were BD customer services) why I had issues with BD on my PC, despite my doing every single check that you mentioned and that they asked for. And this despite running really quite a simple PC with only a few programs - there's MS Office, Firefox, Foobar2000, Acrobat Pro and virtually no other programs on here. And like others, when I found my PC was frozen, if I had TaskManager running at the time, what I would see would be either 100% CPU usage by a BD process, or (less often) 100% RAM usage - despite this being a pretty hi-spec machine with a good modern processor and 32GB DDR4 3.6MHz RAM. Perhaps what I find most extraordinary is the assumption that appears to be widespread on this and on other similar threads that the product is perfect and that if a user has had problems with it then it must be their fault - whereas I would have thought that a more logical response (from the company - not of course from a private individual like yourself) might have been to attempt to understand the issue properly and to use that to build better software. And so perhaps this is a comment on customer service as well as the product, which, as I've already said, I don't miss.

[Deleted User]

@LeCroissant ,

I didn't want to engage in an unnecessary dialogue, which was why I decided to bow out. You have replaced Bitdefender and are happy. Your latest response above did offend me because you made assumptions about me that are not based on fact.

As for my statistics:

https://www.statista.com/topics/9186/bitdefender/#topicOverview

With 500 million customers, assuming that @Scott provided verifiable statistics, which he conceded that he did not, by his estimate, some 30 to 40 percent of its customers are "geeks." That would mean that, at a minimum, over 100 million customers are "geeks" and would notice if BD was hogging resources.

Given the relatively few complaints in these Forums, that would indicate that what you experienced was not happening to the vast majority of BD users.

I am not an "assiduous defender of Bitdefender." I have been critical of certain BD practices and performance over the years. I just think that situations like your unfortunate experience should be put in proper perspective. Others may dispute my perceptions and opinions. That is their right. These BD Forums give all BD customers a chance to voice their opinions respectfully.

It is clear that I am not going to convince you, nor are you going to convince me that BD is inherently flawed and that its customer support is inadequate. So, this has become a useless dialogue. On that note, I will depart from this topic once again.

Enjoy your new security solution, and have a great day.

Regards,

Phil

LeCroissant

@garioch7

Dear Phil,

Apologies if I offended you - that wasn't my intention. But now you've offended me. Could I invite you to re-read what I actually said, and tell me where I made an assumption about you not based on fact? In this thread, you have indeed defended BD assiduously. I wasn't referring to any other threads and haven't checked all your many posts to see what proportion of them is critical of BD. Perhaps you could tell us? Everything I said is a statement of fact: you have indeed not explained all the things I pointed out you haven't explained. Readers can and will make their own conclusions.

Have a great day yourself,

LeCroissant

Flexx

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/332019#Comment_332019

@camarie can you check on this

Regards

camarie

Hard to do a check just based on what's written. However, at this time I will say this: on several computers (not only one, but all have 2 things in common: are laptops, not desktop computers, and are Lenovo) without BD installed, there are considerable durations in minutes until the computer is properly responding. Even Windows Explorer is greatly delayed.

A good place to start is in the event logs, where I would try to look up if in the System (and, to a lesser extent, Application) logs are there an unusually large number of errors and/or warnings, especially after a restart. Is this the case?

LeCroissant

@camarie

I'm not sure if this is an attempt by BD staff to understand the problem, but it sounds as though it might be, so I'll say some more. I already sent you event logs - your customer service staff told me they did not identify the problem and then asked me to spend many hours (which I dutifully did) trying other things which also failed either to identify or solve the problem. My PC is a desktop machine, self-built (but please don't assume I'm rubbish - I've been building PCs for over 20 years) out of good components from reliable manufacturers. I had deliberately designed the PC to be rather more powerful than it needed to be for my purposes, because I wanted it to run fast. And until I installed BD, everything happened on the machine more-or-less instantly - so any slowing was immediately apparent. The problem was only ever intermittent - it would happen at most 3-4 times in a day - but when it did happen, a minor task (such as using windows explorer to find a file) would just take ages - and by ages, of course I mean somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds - but for a task that should occupy essentially no time at all, even a short wait is annoying. On the occasions that I had TaskManager running during a slowing event, what I would usually see would be 100% CPU usage by a BD process - and as soon as the process completed whatever it was doing, what I had asked the CPU to do then happened. It seemed to me as though some BD processes (particularly those associated with Advanced Threat Defence) appeared either to be allocated a CPU priority scheduling ahead of whatever I wanted the CPU to be doing, or to be designed to prevent interrupts in certain tasks. Eventually, with no solution in sight I removed BD, went back to my old antivirus software, and now everything is running very smoothly again - I've had no episodes of slowing at all. I can't help thinking that the problem is with your code, not my machine - but I'm not a computer scientist, so I wouldn't know.

camarie

Understood. I am not related to support and I was not aware of the event log files. I will contact the support colleagues for the log files and whatever else is attached, and yes, being a developer involved, I am interested to find what happens. Your machine looks like a powerful one, so I think the insufficient resources can be written off as a cause of the high overload.

ATD - is integrated in VSSERV service, but the real work is done on a driver and set of dlls external to this process. After I will check the logs, maybe I can see in more detail what could be a leading route to this.

zerocust

I've never had freezing com issue until after installing BD. maybe a similar situation but I thought to share the ones that I normally get a freeze and have to restart to see if it's replicable by everyone. They are amazon audibles, amazon prime videos, teams when joining a meeting(this one seems to have gotten better). Opening windows explorer takes a while to open now.

mrtoburen7

I'm running Windows 10 and have noticed the past few months that BD is REALLY slowing down my system. It is generally unresponsive until BD gets done doing whatever it is doing. I used to never have a problem with BD slowing down my PCs. Here is a pic of task manager showing how BD is sucking up huge amount of resources.

camarie

I believe this will be fixed in the next update.

WalkTheWalk

@Clapton: I am happy to find your detailed report of issues with Bitdefender Internet Security and Windows. I litetally could check off every single symptom you described, as we've been having the very same issue on our barebones Windows 10 Pro system.

I was impressed by how accurately explained all of the problems we've been having. Just a month ago before Christmas 2024, I was ready to plop down $1200 to get a newer desktop PC due to how slow our PC had become.

It's a Dell XPS 8930 I3-9700 16 GB, but it has been running like a 1988 XT system. And I tracked it down to two problems:

1. BitDefender's Updater module launches at random daily in the background, interrupting with an annoying pop up dialoy box, and

2. The default out-of-the-box settings for BD have BOTH the System Scan and Quick Scan launching at 3 pm DAILY! Not 3 AM, 3 PM! Shame on the DEV group.

These settungs are deeply buried. Here's the details on how to fix BOTH issues:

*****

As you know, Bitdefender out of the box is a HUGE resource hog, doing scans in the middle of the day, interrupting your work, chewing up CPU resources.

The DEFAULT out-of-the-box settings for BitDefender Internet Security in Windows 10 or 11 are wrong, resulting in very POOR system performance.

Users (including you) have posted valid complaints on the BitDefender website since 2022.

There are 3 incorrect default settings:

Under Protection ->Antivirus ->System Scan->

...the System Scan is set up to run at 3 PM out of the box! Stupid.

Under Protection ->Antivirus ->Quick Scan->

...the Quick Scan is set up to run at 3 PM out of the box! Stupid again. This is the TOD most ppl are working at their PCs! 3 AM is a good time. 3 PM is a bad time to run scans!

Under Protection ->Antivirus ->System Scan-> Click on Advancd tab. Scroll to the bottom of this screen full of toggle switch settings, and disable "Early boot scan".

Tip #1 & 2 are posted on the BitDefender Support forum, but are hard to find

Tip #3 came from Bitdefender Support.

Bitdefender DEV group needs to correct these issues in the next update.

ALSO, there's a big DESIGN FLAW too:

Bitdefender's Updater application file runs at odd, random times daily, and will interrupt your work causing annoyances.

After much investigation, I found the program file is: "updcenter.exe" and is found in the C:\Windows\Program Files\Bitdefender\Bitdefender Security folder.

There is no way to set the time and date that Bitdefender runs its Updater module (applet), but advanced Windows users can configure a Basic Task using Microsoft's Task Scheduler, to fire off daily and check for ipdates.

This prevents being annoyed by a pop-up dialog whenever you're working.

Bitdefender DEV group needs to add settings for the updater under the Advanced Scan settings tab.

camarie

Asked the guys knowing more than me on the scan and update areas to come up with more details. On the other hand, the default settings are not gonna be 100% loved by everybody, and sounds to me you want the product to work in a particular way tailored to your needs. Whatever can be done from customizing the settings, it should.

I do not fully understand exactly what do you mean by updcenter.exe running at odd, random times daily. I am positive this is not random, and it is either by a timer checking the availability of an update (I suppose this is done every hour, but I asked the guys for the exact details to be sure without me digging into the code I have no extensive knowledge) and/or by a push from the update server (I think it is the latter). Meanwhile, as a suggestion, one can modify in Settings > Update > Update check interval to extend to up to 24 hours the check interval.

WalkTheWalk

TLDR: Thanks, Camarie for the reply and help.

Regarding the BitDefender EXE file "updcenter.exe", it interrupted me 2 or 3 times midday while working on another task, popping up its annoying dialog box, which I had to keep hitting "cancel" to postpone, as I was busy.

It was clearly the Updater wanting to install a new definitions file, but this PC is on almost all day every day, so I wasn't worried about the definitions not being up to date right then.

The 3rd time my PC stalled, I opened Windows Task Manager, and saw that it was this one Bitdefender file, updcenter.exe trying to run.

I called Support on Sunday and got some guy who didnt know much, and all I wanted to know was how to schedule this updater module or program to run at a more convenient time. He didnt know. I even asked specifically about using Windows Task Scheduler, an integral Windows tool you can use to create tasks and run files. Again, he didnt know.

But if I ran that specific fike, the Update Center dialog appeared.

So, I tinkered around, created a Basic Task in Windows Task Scheduler, and run that updcenter.exe file at 6:30 AM. Works great! It seems that Bitdefender needs to see that updcenter.exe has successfully run at leaat once per day, or else BD is unhappy and tries to run it.

From my research, there are 3 programs that BD is trying to run in the background. In my case, daily.

The Update Center, (which we can agree should run 1/day), the Quick Scan (should run 1/day) and the full System Scan (which really should run just 1/week).

Out of the box, on my desktop, it seems now that ALL 3 were launching at 3 pm EST BY DEFAULT, then failing as my PC is on Wifi, and running later at random. At least I caught the Update Center app doing that.

No program or applet should launch by default at 3 pm daily. 3 AM makes sense, 3 PM makes no sense.

Having 2 or 3 programs all running in the background at the same time on any PC slows performance significantly, causing ALL of the issues that Clapton describes in his OP at one time or another. We had them, too.

He was running Windows 7 Pro I believe. I am running Windows 10 Pro (because we hate Windows 11). Both versions behave similarly, with regard to BD, as they are quite similar in functionality. And my desktop is on our 5 GHz Wifi home LAN.

FWIW, what I'm suggesting, has already improved my Pc's performance greatly. Please have QC look into these settings.

Frankly, IDK what the "early boot scan" setting does, but if it's jamming up my desktop after every reboot, it should be disabled as your guy suggested.

Finally, I'm glad I dont have to buy a new desktop after all. I will double the internal RAM memory to 32 GB instead.

I hope this is helpful to BD and other users.