Very high ram usage

Hi,

Is almost 7gb of Ram usage normal? It seems excessively high. This is without doing a scan. On the latest version of Bitdefender Total Security. Ram usage has never been so high.

Intel Core i9 processor 14900K, 6ghz | 128gb Memory | RTX 4080.


Answers

  • Scott
    Scott ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hi @M1cr0n

    That amount of RAM is not normal. It should be anywhere between 250-500 MB (in some cases, ~750) depending on the device's total onboard RAM. There have been some other posts regarding this issue as well. It can just be an isolated issue depending on device settings, installed software etc. more so than the hardware configuration.

    You should contact Support from the link below. Go through the How To's and Troubleshooting prompts until reach the black Contact Support box. You will have three options, Chat, email and phone support, which is not toll-free. Chat can be the quickest way to get things started. They will then tell you how and what log files you will need to send and how to send them via their email link.


    Kind regards,

    Scott

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

  • Flexx
    Flexx mod
    edited January 18

    Additionally, to what @Scott advised, you may need to generate logs and share them with the support team

    Generate Bitdefender BDsysLog: https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1922/

    Generate Bitdefender Support Tool Log: https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1733/

    Generate Bitdefender Connectivity Log: https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/9689/

    If the generated logs are larger than 25 MB, which is the attachment limit for most email vendors, you can upload the logs to https://upload.bitdefender.net/ and share the link with the support team.

    Regards

    Life happens, Coffee helps!

    Show your Attitude, when you reach that Altitude!

    Bitdefender Ultimate Security Plus (user)

  • @M1cr0n

    Any news on your part? Might help with my problem. For months now I'm waiting for a solution and nothing is happening besides reboots.

  • Hi

    Suffered from same issue for a very long time.

    After some research on web + personal Sanity QA tests I've done on my PC:
    In case you're using Bitdefender Firewall - Turn it OFF. Afterwards RAM usage will never pass the ~800MB RAM.

    For several years they have major BUG related to it that still hasn't been fixed yet, and effect on some of users (they are aware).

    Didn't find any mention to it on any version release note, and that's a shame.

    Please update if it helped you.

    Good Luck!

  • Life happens, Coffee helps!

    Show your Attitude, when you reach that Altitude!

    Bitdefender Ultimate Security Plus (user)

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    There is a fix which will be released in the near future (I cannot say exactly a date). It should be allright when ignis_core.dll will get updated to version 2.6.12.188.

  • @camarie

    2 days ago, I got an email saying this was fixed on last version. Installed and after two days and nearly 6h now, I have to say it is better, but it is STILL a problem.

    It started with 376MB of RAM and it is now at nearly 600MB of ram usage.

    It's just a matter of how long BD will crash my PC. This will probably be missed for anyone that doesn't run a PC 24/7 (bar updates that required reboots).

    I'll keep this running under my normal daily usage and report back but I have a feeling, that it won't be solved until 14th of July why my subscription expires.

    Just as a comparison, Norton runs with a lot less memory usage and does the same job. I don't know or care about what BD puts into memory, but I'm sure it is way to much to assume everyone has loads of memory. On older laptops here it means I can't even run BD, let alone with this problem.

    Be back in a few days with, hopefully with better news.

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    @RomKnight The problem discussed was one that escalates relatively quickly in certain conditions, where the RAM usage could grow to several GB. 600 MB is normal, considering the multitude of modules loaded in memory to ensure the product functionality.

    Now it might be true that Norton might run with less memory, but it might not do the same job. I don't know with 100% accuracy what Norton loads, but I know for a fact we do have a lot more functionality, and this comes with a cost.

    I do hope to hear from you the better news in few days.

  • Nunzio77
    Nunzio77 mod
    edited June 10

    @camarie hi, I don't use Norton, but I used Avast Free which has more or less the same number of active processes on the PC and the free version also has more active tools than BD Free or BD Plus (e.g. the firewall) but in total RAM consumption is around 60/70 Mb at most compared to 300/400 Mb of BD on my PC...
    So certainly in my opinion BD must optimize something in the use of RAM and CPU (during the scan phase). 😉🙂

    Nunzio ·

    Bitdefender Plus, Windows 10 Pro-32 Bit, CPU Intel Core2 Duo T7500, RAM 4 Gb - Bitdefender Mobile Security

  • It is true that it is FAR from escalating as quickly. By now, as you know, I should've rebooted under previous abnormal circumstances.

    But just because the speed is different, doesn't mean the problem is not there. Today is now at 600MB and the time it too to write this it increased by 1MB. My previous post it was floating between 570-590MB.

    I also don't know how BD or any other AV works or what it is doing behind the scenes. It's not like any is transparent to the users anyway. And from a user perspective, functionality and features is does not mean users want all of that. I for one don't care about the VPN which is promptly uninstalled after being forcibly installed.

    And while I was writing this the bdhostservice seems to have fallen back to below 500MB to 467MB. Fortunate coincidence or not, it seems that the problem seems to be solved from the time I wrote the second paragraph, until now!

    I'm thinking this based on the fact that the load increased quickly (it is not doing that now), that cryptomining protection is now included too (it wasn't before), and that before the memory usage simply didn't drop under any circumstances.

    I'll keep BD running on this computer and the newer one for now (will re-install there in a few minutes).

    If you're kind enough to restore time lost with my subscription I'll keep with BD otherwise we'll have to end our relationship in July when it ends.

    Nevertheless, I have to say, good work despite me thinking the "expectation management" could be better handled as sometimes a simple "we're still working on it" is enough.
    I wasn't so optimistic with the end result in this case so, thanks.

  • Hi

    I re-activated the Firewall after verifying DLL updated to specific version.

    No significant increase with RAM immediately (few minor MBs if I remember correctly).

    Over time (few days) RAM is between 450-650MB, page file is low - and both are stable!!

    (Just to remind that previously after few short hours it climbed to ~4GB, after a day 20GB, later on ~30GB, while expanding page file to maximum)

    Seems BUG is solved for now. 👏

    Thanks!

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    Avast Free have a significant less features, I suppose. But as I said already, I got the point about the optimization.

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    Appreciate it. I understand that fixing one problem, although of a considerable weight and annoyance (also for us as well), does not fix all the things that can do better. There is a multitude of factors here which I won't bore you with, but at least from what is in my power I will continue to push for squeezing performance as often as I can.

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    Thank you for the feedback. Yes, it was quite a fix, and I am glad that we managed to solve this one.

  • No, Avast Free it has the same features as Bitdefender Plus, it also has the basic firewall. Take a closer look and compare on a PC.

    Thanks.

    Nunzio ·

    Bitdefender Plus, Windows 10 Pro-32 Bit, CPU Intel Core2 Duo T7500, RAM 4 Gb - Bitdefender Mobile Security

  • @RomKnight regarding this:

    1. I for one don't care about the VPN which is promptly uninstalled after being forcibly installed. - All customers that use one of the Bitdefender security suites also benefit from 200 Mb/day of free VPN encrypted traffic, therefore it is necessary to install the app so the customer can utilize the full functionality of the product they chose.

    All Bitdefender apps are easily removable via standard platform specific mechanisms (eg for Windows, go to Programs & Features), so you may of course uninstall the VPN if not required.

    2. If you're kind enough to restore time lost with my subscription I'll keep with BD otherwise we'll have to end our relationship in July when it ends. - Unfortunately, we won't be able to provide an extension of your subscription on the forum to compensate for any lost subscription time, however, you may contact the Support teams to request this and I'm sure they will help you, that shouldn't be a problem given the circumstances. 😉

    Hope this helps.

    Regards,

    Alex

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • @Alexandru_BD

    On point 1 - I said, that was promptly uninstalled so I know how to do that. The point is that it is do NOT impose "features" on customers. If I want it I'll install it and forcing it just annoys me as I have to do one more step to actually finish the install, which is to remove a "feature". And I feel I have to explain the quotes now; it's because for me, it is not a feature it is an imposition.

    On 2, yeah I've answered an email with the ticket opened from a chat from last September which leads me to another BD problem, no ticket webpage. I don't know if a ticket is closed, opened, being looked at… again, poor customer interaction let alone information. So now I'm hoping they answer the email otherwise I'll have to raise a "ticket" ("ticket" for BD because for me it's just a random number).

  • Apologies for the lack of responses (as I created this thread.) Life gets in the way.

    After my initial post above, I can confirm that the BD footprint is much better. Though, 1588mb was the highest it's been lately. Still quite high when idle, but much better than the almost 8gb I was getting.

    I do, however, agree with @RomKnight.

    I don't like features being forced upon me, or additional software like your VPN being installed without my approval. I use ProtonVPN. I don't need another, and I'm happy with the one I subscribe to. It should be our choice what we use or install and not chosen by Bitdefender.

    During the install, you could have a list of features, software, and services to be installed and/or enabled/disabled. Give the end user a choice instead of deciding for us. We know better than you what we want or need. Just a suggestion.

    Your support is also a chore. If we buy additional keys to extend our subscription, it always fails and doesn't add to our subscription. "Oh you got a key that's for 5 devices yet your subscription is for 10 devices" or vice versa. We have to wait days until you fix the issue. Again, no ticketing system, just tedious emailing backwards and forwards.

    I love Bitdefender, have done since the beginning. But even after all of these years, your support still needs to improve. You need to stop bloating the software with features that no one really needs today, like SafePay. I disable this every time. Most people subscribe to a 3rd party Password Manager. Bitdefender doesn't need this, and to be fair, it doesn't work very well. We don't need these in a AV/Firewall application.

    Anyway. Thank you for (eventually) fixing the high memory/cpu issues. It would be good if you could fix the other issues we have too.

    Thanks.

    M1cr0ft.

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    All reasonable points.

    Safepay is used by quite a number of users - although you do not, as it seems, and it's perfectly fine. VPN is used by a very large number of users, and for a good reason.

    VPN needs a convenient and silent installed tool that does the job. The automatic VPN installation is a convenience. We could, absolutely, go to the route of pushing the users to handle themselves each and every flag and option. Thing is, that would make the product usage extremely tedious, and to describe in great detail what each and every option does, not to mention putting the users in charge of maintenance and installation.
    And from my experience, the regular user never likes, nor it does want to twiddle with the settings unless they are guided in the need of a solving a particular problem or tailoring a working flow. The fact there is a small category of power users wanting to be in full control is understandable; in such cases, we prefer to solve punctually and explain quite arcane options that solves particular problems as they arises. The features and fixes that bring value to the users are, and should be, first on the list.

  • Since camarie already covered the VPN topic, I'll just add a few things worth mentioning, concerning the Support teams.

    Bitdefender Support has been praised in numerous independent product reviews and also on this forum and the representatives there always do their very best to address all user inquiries in a timely manner. Support is available on multiple channels and I think this says a lot.
    As a valued provider, Bitdefender strives to provide its customers an unparalleled level of fast and accurate support. To achieve this, the Support Center is updated with troubleshooting and informative articles and answers to common questions, to help you find relevant solutions in a timely manner. This is the knowledge base that contains articles and common fixes for frequently asked questions and represents the self-service area available for all Bitdefender users.

    Then you have the Expert Community, an environment where Bitdefender users, enthusiasts and fans can engage, exchange ideas, support eachother and share their knowledge and solutions. This is also a place of ideation and provides valuable feedback to our development teams. Last but not least, there are three contact channels available to contact the Bitdefender Support teams, phone, chat and email/ticket.

    To connect to a Technical representative, simply choose the request category / reason and scroll down to the bottom of the Support Page to choose between the two live channels, chat or phone, or fill in the contact form which will create a ticket for the engineers and this will also provide you with a reference number. The usual response timeframe for an open case varies between 24 to 48 hours, depending on the workload and business hours. To sum it up, support is a much more complex ecosystem, with multiple ways and channels available.

    Now to the Bitdefender code activation.

    If we buy additional keys to extend our subscription, it always fails and doesn't add to our subscription. "Oh you got a key that's for 5 devices yet your subscription is for 10 devices" or vice versa. We have to wait days until you fix the issue. Again, no ticketing system - First, I think it's common sense to pay attention to what you are buying. This is something that cannot be blamed on support teams. Sure, if the waiting times are sometimes longer, or if they provide ineffective solutions, that's on them. But if you've purchased a key for 5 devices with the intent to extend the validity of a subscription that covers up to 10 devices, that's not gonna work, due to the different number of devices. This is not an issue and the situation can be avoided if you simply compare what you buy with what you already have. 🙂
    In the event the two subscriptions/licenses are not identical, you will only be given the option to activate the new license / subscription in parallel, as the Central account can acommodate multiple licenses in its latest form. You can find detailed guidelines on subscriptions activations by clicking on this article:

    https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1715/

    There is of course a ticketing system in place and a ticket is created whenever you contact the Support teams.
    The email communication will be made for the respective ticket.

    I hope things are clearer now.

    Regards,

    Alex

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • @Alexandru_BD

    A simple front end to said ticketing system would avoid navigating, in your words: "To sum it up, support is a much more complex ecosystem, with multiple ways and channels available". Emphasis on complex

    Users don't need multiple and convoluted ways to get support.

    So no, it is not really clear because as far as I know, there's no way, like I've mentioned before to access said tickets.

    BTW, back and forth communication can get really confusing, really fast when the history is kept in the email.

    And lets be clear that personally, I'm not against having multiple points of contact. The problem with BD is AFTER that initial contact because after a ticket has been raised, EVERY information concerning that ticket should be visible somewhere. The email is for notifications, it can even be used as automation for question answer but for simplicity, one should go to the ticketing tool, insert the ticket number and all should be in one place.

    Pretty sure that would avoid posts here because people can't find anything concerning their problem elsewhere. And if they try to answer the email, it's another 24/48h hopefully, for answer… for a problem that will be solved, hopefully, in the email before because the support only sees emails in order (90% confident on this one, i really hope I'm wrong).

    You're trying to stop the sun with transparent film. I understand your position, but as user, it's all I see.

    Only my opinion obviously, but again, from MY point of view it would improve communication by a lot.

  • Alexandru_BD
    Alexandru_BD admin
    edited June 13

    Hi @RomKnight and thanks for following up.

    'And lets be clear that personally, I'm not against having multiple points of contact'. - This is exactly what I wanted to highlight, that there are several contact channels available, and they are designed to satisfy different needs, from less time-sensitive issues to urgent matters and they also cover the self-service area, for those users who wish to help themselves and look for solutions individually. Of course, this works up to a point where more technical assistance might be required and this is when it becomes necessary to contact a Bitdefender representative for support. Now, there is a ticket platform, internally, that helps the Support teams handle consumer requests. And it's very efficient, I know this because I was personally part of the assistance teams at some point.

    However, the ticketing platform is not a public platform, like the ones delivery companies have, where you would enter your AWB for tracking the shipment electronically. It doesn't work like this and the communication on the ticket is done via email. But whenever a Bitdefender representative accesses your ticket, based on the said reference number, the full conversation will be available to them, and this helps them know what has been tried so far and also helps if the ticket changes hands, or if the case is reassigned to a different agent or escalated to another department that has the required tools and knowledge to assist further. When I've mentioned complexity, I was referring to the multiple support ways and contact channels available, emphasizing the fact that the assistance is layered in levels.
    Now, the reference number you receive when filling in the contact form serves as an unique identification number and this should also be displayed in the email communication between you and the support teams. Email support is a widespread practice, and apart from the live channels (chat, phone) this comes 3rd as one of the most efficient ways to provide assistance to customers, because there's a history that can be consulted by the engineers, whenever the case needs further escalation and each ticket also has special fields that are automatically completed (product name, category - technical, commercial, issue type, channel, etc) when the customer fills in the contact form online. This streamlines the assistance process and is a game changer because this way the cases can be automatically forwarded and assigned to the right department, thereby facilitating the resolution duration.

    I can expand much more on this, but essentially, Bitdefender has an advanced support infrastructure designed in such a way as to effectively serve both the user and the support teams, in order to offer fast and accurate assistance. I know it may not seem this way from the outside, but I assure you that a lot of time and resources were invested in creating this support ecosystem, and the metrics speak for themselves, this way the support teams managed to handle more inquiries faster, thus helping more people in a shorter amount of time.

    Pretty sure that would avoid posts here because people can't find anything concerning their problem elsewhere. - On the contrary, we don't wish to avoid posts here, but encourage them. Because this way, the information here becomes available to anyone and we increase our chances of reaching more people, thus helping more.

    Sure, patience is needed sometimes, as there can be peak hours and increased demand in some periods, but again, for more time-sensitive situations there are always the live contact channels you can use, chat and phone and most of the inquiries can be resolved on the spot (others may require further escalation, depending on the nature of the request).

    I hope the information is useful and that it reveals a more insightful picture about what's actually going on when it comes to support. In a nutshell, their main objective is to help as many customers as possible and to solve their requirements in a timely manner. That's the mindset there.

    Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user

  • Just want to make sure that +-600MB is standard mem usage. It is always around that on my PC with a few services disabled. I mean, I used the toggle switches but not sure they actually, do something, example, if I disable the AV or EVERYTHING, none of the BD services disappear from task manager, nor the memory comes down.

    So, though the memory is stable, why does it keep occupying +-600MB all the time?

  • camarie
    camarie BD Staff

    I would say 600 MB is on the high end. On my laptop the memory usage is:
    bdservicehost.exe (there are 5 services): 400 + 14 + 13 + 6 + 8 for a total of ~440MB
    bduserhost.exe (multiple instances): ~10MB
    bdagent.exe: 18MB
    bdntwrk.exe: 3MB
    bdredline.exe: 2MB
    obkagent.exe: 4MB (if running)
    bdvpnservice: ~5MB
    So with all running, it's around 480MB. The range I am usually see is in 400-600 MB.

    So on your machine 600 MB I would say is on the high limit, but that depends also on the particularity of what runs and happens on it - but yes, it is on the standard memory usage.

    The reason for why the memory consumption is on that value is simply the product does a ton of things. Setting an option to OFF, for example, disables, say realtime functionalities, but that does not mean the module is unloaded, it is just running with less capabilities, registering less I/O with the operating system and so on.

    For the multiple bdservicehost.exe executables you are seeing, the reason is simpler: once upon a time there was a single service (vsserv.exe - what you see now bdservicehost.exe that occupies the most of the memory) where everything was cramped. I was one of the proponents of "let's not keep everything in one process, and keep only the proxies there and spawn another processes as necessary". This is, for example, why the entire vulnerability scanning, which once was in the service, was moved in the vulnerability.scan.exe which executes only when the scan needs to be done, reports the results, then stops. There are now separate services for core/defense functionalities (bdservicehost.exe Virus Shield); vulnerability, wifi, networking (bdservicehost.exe BDAuxSrv); application service (bdservicehost.exe BDAppSrv); Safepay service (bdservicehost.exe BDSafepaySrv), and the protected service which ensures integrity (bdservicehost.exe BDProtSrv). All these are to maintain separate and self-functioning (to a degree) various components, and avoid that a bug or crash in one of them to drag everything down.
    The same for bduserhost.exe various instances, which, in addition of avoiding cramping everything into the user agent (bdagent.exe), are also needed to execute in the user's context: for example, when wifi networks changed, audio/video protection is enabled etc. (a wifi network or Zoom call occurs in the context of an user but not for another user, for example).

    The reality, as I see it, comes down to three things: one is to avoid troubles by putting all the eggs in one basket (which I think we succeed, although this complicated our life tremendously - but it's not our life which needs to be nice, but the user life :) ), the second is the product offers so much functionality (but this comes with a cost), and third, which we are currently ongoing do, is to keep things as slim as possible by avoiding doing more than necessary while keeping things running correctly. The latter is an ongoing thing which we are doing (in fact, I am working on a part of the product optimization right now).

    I hope I managed to clarify a little bit the why.