Does Disabling Virus Scan Increase Performance? (Windows)

homerjsim · Post by **homerjsim** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:14 pm

I haven't had a chance to actually try this yet, but does disabling virus scan (McAfee in my case) increase performance?

...I would think Live would take a hit from the on-access scanning of the audio...

thanks....

franknputer · Post by **franknputer** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:36 pm

Yes, disabling your virus scanner will DEFINITELY lower the overhead on your computer. You do NOT want McAfee trying to scan your audio files while trying to play them!

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:26 am

Don't disable McAfee; uninstall the bastard.

I was having an issue a couple years ago with LIve 4 and some plugins. The CPU was higher than it should have been, and I was getting crackles even though Live's CPU meter read about 45%.

The only change I'd made to my system? My trendMicro subscription had run out, and I was using the McAfee provided by my ISP. Even though McAfee was disabled, it was still causing trouble.

I uninstalled McAfee, cleaned up the registry afterwards and renewed my trendMicro subscription. All the issues were gone.

McAfee and Norton have no place on any machine used for audio (or any machine, period).

ew

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:00 am

how's sophos?

Soarer · Post by **Soarer** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:37 am

And how about Avast home? Same?

blank · Post by **blank** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:04 am

All anti virus are in the same boat, they install tons of things everywhere on your machine and decrease the system performance. Mcafee and norton are pretty good example of this afaik kaspersky panda and avg too.

If you are really affraid about virus infection, why the hell are you using Mcafee ?

The best alternative to all this krappy security softs is prolly a router with ips capabilities , ips will nuke virus down the pipe by analysing the content passing trough the router. Now this technology is affordable ( from linksys I think) and its a real must to defend a system.

Most of the time virus comes from the internet but for internal scan you can use a usb key with u3 capabilities and avast u3 version running on.

robbmasters · Post by **robbmasters** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:07 am

My new favourite (and completely free!) virus scanner: http://www.activevirusshield.com (powered by Kaspersky)

I'm so glad to be shot of Norton and AVG.

Soarer · Post by **Soarer** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:43 pm

But isn't it enough to just completely exit the program while making music?
Is it necessarry to uninstall if I want to test the difference?

4am · Post by **4am** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:42 pm

afaik if you exit the program it should be enough

i don't exit the program when i'm in the studio, but definitely always when i play live outside. last year i was playing in a club when avg started to scan the computer

... it was not so funny but i could exit the program and continue playing... ouffff....

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:49 pm

This is one reason I always just ran one of the free online virus scanners, you don't have to have an app running all the time in the background on your PC. Do it daily before you go to bed, you should be save enough.

kaffein · Post by **kaffein** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:07 pm

McAffe and Norton ARE Viruses, and bog down performance like no other.
Use AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:19 am

kaffein wrote:McAffe and Norton ARE Viruses, and bog down performance like no other.
Use AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/

+1 been using AVGFree for years and never had a problem. i do kill it when i play out live though just to be safe, and i don't let it do automatic scans at all so theres really no cpu load when it's only idling, only RAM.

My new favourite (and completely free!) virus scanner: http://www.activevirusshield.com (powered by Kaspersky)

this might be alright, but i have to say i'm suspect of anything associated with AOL...

90% of virus protection and firewall stuff is snakeoil anyway in my opinion. if you're careful about emails and attachments you can eliminate the risk of trojans etc for a start.

blank · Post by **blank** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:31 am

Most of the time when you shut down an antivirus some processes still running in the background ( see avg and a lot of others).

Some antivir are also known to hide some process from windows task manager or some files from explorer using the same method that rootkits usually do.

It's not only related to cpu/ram usage, performance related to disk read/write is also affected by the usage of an antivir.

Spacerboy · Post by **Spacerboy** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:13 am

robbmasters wrote:My new favourite (and completely free!) virus scanner: http://www.activevirusshield.com (powered by Kaspersky)

I'm so glad to be shot of Norton and AVG.

email scan included? if not...i stay with AVAST - home

robbmasters · Post by **robbmasters** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:16 am

Spacerboy wrote:
robbmasters wrote:My new favourite (and completely free!) virus scanner: http://www.activevirusshield.com (powered by Kaspersky)

I'm so glad to be shot of Norton and AVG.
email scan included?

Yes.

You might not be able to schedule full system scans with it though....