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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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

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 :) :)

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

You're now good to go :)

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.

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.

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.

@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.

@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

@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.

@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

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.