Bitdefender CPU usage abnormally high

robtom
robtom
edited January 2022 in General Topics


Bitdefender Total Security 2019 hogs my CPU. (Intel core i5-7600 running at 3.50GHz with 8Gb RAM, Windows 10, 5 internal hard drives - a mix of M2 and SSHDs.) It doesn't happen all the time, always just after start-up if I allow Bitdefender to do that (Protection > Antivirus > Settings > Shield > Advanced settings > Early boot scan ON), but if that setting is OFF then the problem will happen at a time of Bitdefender's choosing. It seems to hog the machine for 45 minutes until its scheduled scan is complete.


Switching on and off various features appears to make no difference to this behaviour.


The process name of the culprit is always bdservicehost (Bitdefender Virus Shield). When it is doing its worst, it hogs between 90% and 98% of the CPU and the machine grinds to a halt. Other work is almost pointless to attempt because there are no free CPU resources to deploy to that work. When it is not doing its intense scanning (I suppose), the machine is perfectly usable.


This is the only process on the machine that Task Manager reports as having a Very High Trend. I need a fix or else it gets uninstalled and you lose a customer. Happy Christmas!

Bitdefender high CPU screenshot.jpg

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Comments


  • Hello /index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="214691" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/" rel="">@robtom,


    Please let me know, did you configure the scheduled scan to have a High Scan Task Priority? You can check this by editing the scheduled scan.


  • Hello Alex,


     


    No, I didn't set it to have a High Scan Task Priority.


     


    Thanks.


  • Hello /index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="214691" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/" rel="">@robtom,


    We need to further investigate the situation you're encountering. Kindly email us at bitsy@bitdefender.com and reply to this thread with the support ticket number that will be sent automatically as a reply to your mail.


     

  • cool1007
    cool1007
    edited January 2020


    Hi /index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="214691" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/" rel="">@robtom,


    I have had this issue for months (since September) and up until November, Bitdefender Tech Support has not been able to solve it. Did you?


    I already sent another reply to my old ticket No. 2019092716340003, but I have little hope. If they can't fix this I think I'll switch to ***.


    Thank you,

  • robtom
    robtom
    edited January 2020


    Hi cool1007,


    I actually gave up on this. The problem was slowing the machine down so excessively that I ended up deleting the software rather than going through hoops with their tech support people. There was such an abundance of accounts like mine - and yours - on this forum and elsewhere that I reckoned that this issue, in spite of my best efforts to research it and circumvent it myself, would not get solved anyway. Good luck with your issue.***


  • Hello /index.php?/profile/151089-cool1007/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="151089" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/151089-cool1007/" rel="">@cool1007,


    As discussed via the ticketing system, we're glad to hear that the situation is now solved!


    /index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="214691" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/214691-robtom/" rel="">@robtom We were looking forward to investigating upon the slowdowns you encountered. I'm quite certain that it can be solved. 


    Looking forward to picking up your support ticket, should you decide to continue the troubleshooting process!


     

  • I too have had this problem. It seems to occur when I initially boot-up my system. I have a gauge on my desktop the shows CPU, GPU, drives, etc. and bdservicehost seems to run in the neighborhood of 87-93% upon booting. My solution has been to reboot the system and the CPU runs at the normal range and I no longer see bdservicehost in my processes hogging everything. I have had no luck in switching it off or delaying its starting at boot.

    I wish there was another solution than what I have come up with though.

  • I have 8 License keys with Bitdefender, in total I have 2 Laptops, 1 remote server, 1 home server and 2 home gaming machines, all now running Bitdefender. That’s 6 machines all with the same problem. If I leave all machines on, after a short time the CPU's all Max out apart from the AMD Ryzen 7 3700x. That one goes up between 40-60 %. I have dug around constantly and still can’t get this rite. I have uninstalled it for now on the two servers because they are un usable at 100% CPU usage. I am now running AVG on both servers with zero issues. I do like Bitdefender and the firewall however if I can’t get this fixed, I’m going to have to install a hardware firewall. If this cant be fixed can I get a refund?

  • I am also having this problem and requesting a refund. "Light on system resources," HA!!!

  • I am facing the same issue. Bitdefender claims about low on resources is a big lie.

  • I see the same problem, according to Redit BitDefender Devs know about this and are working on it - how about they tell the mods in the official support forum!


  • Try changing your bitdefender profile to game mode (under utilities tab), this suppresses background activity from the software. This reduced my bitdefender CPU load from a constant 10% to 0.1%. Of course, this probably also reduces the level of protection you are receiving.

  • JeffC
    JeffC
    edited September 2020

    I am also having this problem. I'm using the newest Total Security on a modern Thinkpad, a decent machine, but CPU usage for bdservicehost is always between 20%-60%, except sometimes very briefly after start-up when it can be under 1%. I don't know when this began, but I noticed it about a week ago. I switched to Total Security from regular Bitdefender Antivirus a few weeks ago. I have tried re-installing twice, that didn't work. I contacted support 6 days ago, and the only advice I've received in that time is an email suggesting that I re-install. It has now been 4 days since that email, and I've received no advice since then.

    I'm about an hour away from uninstalling Bitdefender and trying another company's product. What else can I do, really?

    If support is reading this, my ticket is 1005642863.

  • I'm also having this problem, although when I turned off protection & turned it back on, it didn't go back upto 100%, but b/c everyone else is having this issue, I'm going to have to look for something else.


    You guys don't even have a "turn off for an hour" feature.


    I don't see ANY features with your software. I'm new to BD.

  • I run the family version of BD and when I go to task manager it says that BD parental control is hogging 46% of my kids device constantly. Sort this out BD.

  • I'm having the same problem.

    Before I came here, I turned all "Protection Features" OFF and went back to Task Manager, there was NO CHANGE.

    When I turned them all ON again the offending process stopped.

    I did start and stop "Quick Scan" and "System Scan" while I was hacking around.

    OMEN i7-7700K @ 4.50Ghz, 32Mb, W10 Pro 64 20H2 Build 19042.746, w/GeForce 1080 GTX 8Gb, 3x1Tb Samsung SSD.

    I have 15 copys on development machines, lets fix this NOW BitDefender.

  • Chuck_IV
    Chuck_IV ✭✭
    edited March 2021

    Having this issue too. As I type this bdservicehost/Bitdefender Virus Shield is consuming over 16% of my CPU while doing, supposedly, nothing. It is keeping my CPU temps in the mid 40’sC when they normally idle at around 30C

    However, at certain times, I’ll check and the same process will be using less than 1% and my idle temps will be fine.

    Even turning off ALL protection, the virus shield will continue to use 16% or so of my CPU, no matter what. It’s like BD is running some type of scan in the background that the user has no control over nor is able to see. Also, my hard drive light is going nuts so it definitely looks like it is doing some type of hidden scan

    I am about ready to kick BD to the curb over this. It has to stop.

    I have done a complete uninstall(CPU usage goes back to normal) using the uninstall tool and reinstall but it continues. BD 2020 didn’t have this issue for me.

    EDIT

    it is the Real Time Protection that is causing this. If I disable it and reboot, my CPU is at 3% and no hard drive thrashing. Once I turn it on the Real Time Protection, the hard rice goes crazy and CPU usage sits at 16%. This goes on for an HOUR OR MORE on an i9 10900 machine.

    it should NOT be doing this for that long or even at ALL unless it is doing a full scan.

    **EDIT 2 **

    I have to remove this for the time being. Been running my CPU at 16%, thrashing my hard drive and keeping my CPU temps a good 10-15 degrees higher than normal for several HOURS now.

    Please FIX it ASAP. This thread is quite old too and has been going for a while.

  • I believe the issue has something to do with USB devices. Stumbled across it on accident. While looking at the Windows 10 Task Manager, bdservicehost was at a constant 14+% CPU usage; however, the moment I unplugged my USB-C drive and the CPU usage dropped to less than 1%. My drive is warm like it had been running constantly, so I believe there is something in the programming that constantly scans external devices. Please forward this to the dev team so they can address the issue.

  • Just reinstalled BD after a 3 month "protest uninstall" was pushing up CPU and Ram constantly. Has been fresh installed (latest version) and after an hour back to thrashing my Mac, same for all 5 of my machines.


    Tried all the fixes last time, not interested in spending the time again, so cancelling my auto license renewal, you have not addressed this issue in years now 😑

  • We have the same problem. 95-100% CPU consumed by "BDServicehost". Impossible to do any work.

    And the only thing I see here is a minor orgy of Bitdefender customer time lost and frustration being gained with no solution in sight from the Bitdefender. As always with inferior suppliers our company will spend our money elsewhere. Out you go Bitdefender.

  • I only experienced the 100% HD activity after I did a full system scan a few weeks ago.

    Since then I've narrowed it down to 3 processes, one of which was bdServicehost.exe. I eliminated the other 2, but on start-up, bdServicehost.exe continued to thrash my drives (mirrored RAID) so I uninstalled Bitdefender and put something else in its place. That has resolved my problem.

    Only problem now is my account does not have the option to cancel Auto-Renewal.

    Are ther any other options for cancelling auto-renewal?

  • Sparticus
    Sparticus
    edited May 2021
    I'm actually writing to report the polar opposite of this problem, but somehow I feel like the solution is going to be the same. I have a Rome Generation ThreadRipper processor with 64 physical cores, when I manually trigger a scan, I want it to make that processor bleed! If there is any sort of a setting that alters how much of the CPU/Memory you're willing to give to the full system scan, I'd love to hear it. I've way too many files to go through for this thing to sit there and wait while this uses less than a 10th of what it has available.
  • showp1984
    showp1984
    edited May 2021
    I thought I had the same issue on my macs, but I found out that the toggle to ignore backups ("Don't scan content in backups") doesn't exclude local timemachine snapshots.

    Adding "/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/YourMacName" to the exclude list resolved the issue on all of my macs during local snapshot creation - which appears to be done quite frequently by macOS
  • I have 25+/- license of this. I am experiencing the same situations as described above.

    These are not old machines. Most are Core i5's or Core i7's with 8-16GB RAM. Most are SSD while a few are spinning disk.

    On every machine, the downloader, endpoint and other services are hogs plain and simple. Task Manager always has them at moderate to very high. With the mix I have it is not the machines, it is the one thing in common... Bitdefender.

    The annoyance of supposedly needing a full scan constantly is crazy. Is Bitdefender proactive? The scan itself takes forever and the machine lags even worse for a while after it. Big shocker since Bitdefender already eats as much or more than most other processes.

    I switched my company to Bitdefender from another product. I am now reevaluating my decision as it seems to have been a mistake in choosing this product.

  • This dropped my cpu usage on my Macbook air by about 50%. I also excepted

    /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb but it didn't seem to make much more difference. It still says "scanning new files".

  • Has anyone found a solution to this? bdservicehost is running 90-95% of my CPU for a significant time after booting up. This has to stop or I'm dumping BD.

  • I started to have the same issue on a brand new installed PC (win10, 21h1, I7 CPU, 32Gb). Even after deactivating all modules, still it takes huge CPU load. Any solution found? Other than uninstalling it?


  • I've had BD hog resources for a fair while now. Taken it off i3 and i5 laptops. Tonight had to disable everything as it ground my PC to a halt. If my i9-10900F 32gb RAM machine can't handle it, god knows what lesser machines will do.

    However, this was when I was downloading a 28GB update for something. As soon as that update was finished, I restarted all the protection and CPU usage went down from 16% to 1%, and power sage went from Very High to Very Low.

    BD has an issu

  • I've had BD hog resources for a fair while now. Taken it off i3 and i5 laptops. Tonight had to disable everything as it ground my PC to a halt. If my i9-10900F 32gb RAM machine can't handle it, god knows what lesser machines will do.

    However, this was when I was downloading a 28GB update for something. As soon as that update was finished, I restarted all the protection and CPU usage went down from 16% to 1%, and power sage went from Very High to Very Low.

    BD has an issue with hogging resources. My 3 year subscription comes to an end shortly, and I cancelled my auto renew (which elicited a 30% discount straight away!) as I think it time to look at the competition.

  • I just purchased BD and have exactly the same issue; I can see that obviously this issue is not going to get resolved, so I uninstalled the product and I'm back to normal.

    Can anybody suggest an alternative product that doesn't cripple your machine and is reliable?

  • I have this same issue, powerful i7, 64 gb ram,

    Memory pushing 94% and locking up my system cause the bitdefendor helper .. 2 minutes for ditching my 5 licenses and going some where else. I bet its mining crypto like Nortons complete over reach of power!!!

  • I don't see any solutions.
  • Alexandru_BD
    Alexandru_BD admin
    edited February 2022

    Hello,

    Is everyone using the latest 26.0.10.45 version?

    @Kashtan I can assure you Bitdefender's only task is to protect your devices.

    If you are still encountering this issue after the latest update, I would recommend contacting the Technical Support Teams, as more information might be required to troubleshoot this. The engineers will request some logs from you, in order 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/

    Best regards.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • enchantingpuppisabat
    edited March 2022

    Hi,

    I use version 26.0.12.52. I manage to fix this issue on my system by deactivating from Settings: Special offers and Recommendention notifications.

    Regards

  • Scott
    Scott Defender of the month mod

    I have mine set like yours. Intel i5 2.40 Ghz, 16 GB of Ram, Windows 11 Pro 21H2.


    All Bitdefender Home Product User Guides:https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/user-guides/

  • I've the same problem: 60% - 90% cpu usage bdservicehost/bitdefender virus shield.

    Installed 1 week ago. All updated.

    priority scal: low.

    What's the problem??

  • Hi @DavidBrogg,

    Kindly contact our Technical Teams for further assistance, as they will require logs from the machine and a remote session might also be necessary, if the logs don't reveal 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/

    Stay safe.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • I have been having this problem since February! I did contact the technical team, and followed their instructions, gathering logs, etc...

    I received this response in Feb:

    I have looked into the case and it seems that the situation is caused by an issue that has already been acknowledged by our development team. We are currently working on a fix that will be done by means of an automatic update and won't require any additional action on your end.

    So, this is a known issue, and it is now near the end of April, and there is NO FIX!

    My laptop fan is going flat out to try and compensate for the high CPU usage. This is not healthy and severely limits my use.

    I am amazed at a known problem taking MONTHS to correct. No workarounds. Very frustrating. (and, yes, I have uninstalled/reinstalled to no effect---and all updates done...)

  • Hello @909,

    We're still waiting for the developers to confirm the fix. Unfortunately, I don't have an ETA at the moment, but I can assure you it is work in progress and all parties want to get this resolved as quickly as possible and unlock the resources assigned for this investigation.

    Thank you for your understanding.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • Thanks for your reply.

    But, I have to say I am finding hard to be understanding---especially when I see that this thread has been going for more than 2 YEARS!

  • I have been experiencing this problem for over a year now. Bitdefender, You're losing a customer today.

  • Hello @909, @Lilith,

    Kindly contact our Technical Teams for further assistance, as they will require logs from the machine and a remote session might also be necessary, if the logs don't reveal 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/

    Thank you.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • Actually, this issue seems to have been going on since at least 2006. I switched from Kaspersky due to concerns about software from Russia. I relied on your advertising.

    Your software obviously has serious bugs, you've known about it for years, "require logs from the machine and a remote session" are canned responses. I haven't seen anybody reporting the "logs" and "remote session" helped.

    I can't allow my computer to be 'down' for hours at a time due to your software.

    I realize getting a refund is impossible, all I can do is spread the word Bitdefender has serious, fatal issues that it hopes potential buyers won't discover till it's too late.

    Somebody is going to put together a Class Action and end up with whatever is left of your company, assuming all your customers haven't already quit.

  • I've had this for over a year too, since I installed Bitdefender. I'm not interested in providing logs as nothing ever seems to get done. I had another issue which I spent 6 months talking to them about. It was eventually fixed but for months afterwards I kept getting update emails saying that they were still working on the problem despite me telling them continuously that it had in fact been fixed! During the whole process I also asked on numerous occasions for them to confirm that despite my issues that I was still properly protected. They kept side stepping that question and never gave a straight answer. Accprdingly I'm not confident that there is proper feedback between the support team and the developers, and if the high resources issue isn't fixed by the time my subscription is up in August I will most certainly be trying anouther product.

  • Ingrid2003
    edited May 2022

    My partner and I have had this CPU issue, now we no longer use Bitdefender. Best move ever!

    We now use Emsisoft Anti-Malware for our PCs, and Emsisoft Mobile Security for our Android smartphone. Unfortunately there isn't an option for the Apple crowd.

    What a difference in using Emsisoft. Wish we had ditched Bitdefender months earlier.

    So if anyone reading this forum is wanting to use something else, give this a trial and see if it suits you. I will make note that the Anti-Malware for PCs is Windows only, not Mac. And is Windows 10 or 11, not earlier Windows (like 8 and 7). Also, it uses the Windows Firewall and not its own.


    Emsisoft Anti-Malware for PCs:


    Emsisoft Mobile Security for Android 5.0 and up:

    https://www.emsisoft.com/en/home/mobilesecurity/

  • So, Alexandru_BD, I've already contacted "Technical Teams for further assistance, as they will require logs from the machine and a remote session might also be necessary, if the logs don't reveal the root cause."

    Provided logs as requested.

    And, guess what???

    They recognized a "known issue". (And it would seem that this is an issue going for years). So further logs are NOT going to help. They just aren't fixing this "KNOWN ISSUE"!!!

    If this has been going on for so long, why doesn't this team just go back and start from scratch?

    And, it would be really nice to update those of us suffering this issue---rather than just making the same requests/comments over and over...

  • Flexx
    Flexx DEFENDER OF THE YEAR 2023 / DEFENDER OF THE MONTH ✭✭✭✭✭ mod
    edited May 2022

    To add here though you might have shifted to emsisoft due to your own concerns but you still are indirectly a part of bitdefender since both emsisoft antimalware for windows and emsisoft mobile security totally rely on bitdefender signature based engine (created by malware researchers), meaning emsisoft is totally dependent on bitdefender for the detection on malware.

    Even more, emsisoft mobile security is the rebranded version of bitdefender mobile security.

    Regards

    Life happens, Coffee helps!

    Show your Attitude, when you reach that Altitude!

    Bitdefender Ultimate Security Plus (user)

  • Bitdefender has become a joke, constantly makes CPU fans run at higher rate than necessary, while actually being incredibly taxing on the system in general. I will no longer be using bitdefender and will never again recommend any of your products. I will be going with a much better antivirus protection software. Even Cylance Smart Antivirus would be better at this point.

  • Alexandru_BD
    Alexandru_BD admin
    edited May 2022

    Hello,

    Before anything else, I would recommend to stop unnecessary background processes and disable as many programs set to run at startup as possible. This will help. The known issue aggravates the situation, but it's not the only culprit, as we've seen so far.

    Furthermore, as different machines are involved and several reports have been made in this community, but also in the support department, the best way to move forward would be to stay in contact with the engineers for investigation, workarounds, device optimization and updates concernig this known issue, which DOES NOT affect all Bitdefender users. Clearly, there is pattern here and the only way to know for sure what is causing it for each machine in particular would be to get the logs and connect remotely to the device, if necessary, to further advise on the next steps.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • "Best way to move forward"???

    Well, I've sent the logs. Was told there was NO "workaround". No contact details to "stay in contact with the engineers" (don't get any useful response from the "tech team"). Have not had any "device optimization" advice. Or any "updates concerning this known issue"!

    So, how am I to take this advice?

    The fact that it does not affect all users is not very helpful. The logs I provided were for THIS user. This just isn't good enough!