I've observed when the MsMpEng.exe process runs (related to MS Security Essentials) at 25-30% CPU on my desktop, DNS stops functioning until the process either stops or the % CPU falls under approximately 15%. This process seems to run for no apparent reason during the day. My MS SE scan occurs at 4am and I do not download any files at the time the process runs.

The process runs at 25-30% CPU for at least 15 minutes and during this time DNS freezes. Once the process stops or reduces CPU usage, DNS works normally. Currently, I observe MsMpEng.exe is running at 8-12% CPU and DNS is working.

 I can't figure our what's going on with MsMpEng.exe. Any ideas?

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DNS Pro 12 (32-bit), KnowBrainer 2012, VoicePower, Intel i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge) 8MB L3 cache 3.5-3.9GHz, 16 GB RAM DDR3 1600MHz, 240 GB SSD and 1TB HD, Windows 7 (64-bit), Airline 77 mic (Laptop: Lenovo X61t, Intel L7700 @ 1.80 GHz 4 MB L2 cache, 3 GB RAM, Windows 7)

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-vista-tips/what-is-msmpeng-exe/

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

Thanks for the link, but I'm not using Windows Defender. It's turned off.

EDIT: OK, I now see some of the comments on the linked page saying to do the same thing for MS Security Essentials. I'll give that a try.

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DNS Pro 12 (32-bit), KnowBrainer 2012, VoicePower, Intel i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge) 8MB L3 cache 3.5-3.9GHz, 16 GB RAM DDR3 1600MHz, 240 GB SSD and 1TB HD, Windows 7 (64-bit), Airline 77 mic (Laptop: Lenovo X61t, Intel L7700 @ 1.80 GHz 4 MB L2 cache, 3 GB RAM, Windows 7)

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit with Microsoft Security Essentials and I have had this problem randomly last couple of months. I believe it started with a Microsoft update because I didn't notice it when first moved to my Windows 7 64-bit machine in November.

I haven't had the chance to track down any correlative events on my computer. I thought for a while that it was possibly scanning each Word document as the document auto-saved. But I set this configuration to not examine word documents and that didn't seem to help.

I turned off Microsoft Security Essentials and the problem went away. Perhaps someone has other suggestions besides moving to a different security suite

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Doing a full scan seems to be the cure, however there are also various posts suggesting adding the MS security essential and Windows Defender folders to the excluded folders to be scanned.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_start/recent-upgrade-to-mse-caused-me-to-get-msmpengexe/30961785-3199-4305-8a51-7119ec2485d5

Lindsay

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

My problem is not during a scan. It is with "Real-Time defense" Now perhaps it only happens after a scan but I doubt it. However, I will need to adjust configurations and try again.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

I don't think they are saying that the problem is when you are doing the scan, but what they are saying is that if you complete a full scan then it will stop this process kicking in all the time and locking at the CPU quota.  It's because a full scan has not been completed that this process is kicking in in other words.

That was my reading of it anyway.

Lindsay

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

OK, what I will try is a "complete scan"including all the drives where save my word docs. Since a full scan is defaulted weekly, that should prevent the problem for at least a week. I will report back.

 

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Here is a report after some testing. As suggested in the link in Monkey's message, I excluded the directory holding MS Security Essentials and the MsMpEng.exe file from SE's scan and have not experienced any more DNS freeze-ups. MsMpEng.exe has been running < 15% CPU.

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DNS Pro 12 (32-bit), KnowBrainer 2012, VoicePower, Intel i7-3770K (Ivy Bridge) 8MB L3 cache 3.5-3.9GHz, 16 GB RAM DDR3 1600MHz, 240 GB SSD and 1TB HD, Windows 7 (64-bit), Airline 77 mic (Laptop: Lenovo X61t, Intel L7700 @ 1.80 GHz 4 MB L2 cache, 3 GB RAM, Windows 7)

that did not fix the problem.

I set up a full scan to run overnight. It completed successfully and I restarted with the Microsoft security essentials running.

After about two hours of dictating into a new Microsoft Word doc, MsMpEng.exe was running at 50% of one core on my hex core and hung Microsoft Word and DNS. I killed the process manually, word returned to normal and DNS gave me an error message:"an internal error occurred"

the only applications running for Internet Explorer nine, Dragon and Microsoft Word. I also run a real bare-bones number processes so I'm somewhat stumped.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

I have yet to see the  MsMpEng.exe file appear in the task Manager process list and I don't appear to have a problem although the file is on my computer.

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Jomark

Hey all,

I concur with John (Jomark). I've had Microsoft Security Essentials installed on all my systems since it was first released. MsMpEng.exe is always active in the background on all of my systems and never causes any problems with DNS or any other application at any time. This is independent of whether a running a full scan or quick scan and/or whether or not Microsoft Security Essentials is performing any kind of real time analysis. This executable is simply the Antimalware Service Executable associated with Microsoft Security Essentials.

Having a problem with this file is not normal relative to the overall functionality of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

Logic 101: Post Hoc fallacy - The logical fallacy of believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation

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Have you turned on "Real-Time" protection? As soon as I do MsMpEng.exe appears in task manager.

Have you enabled Behavioral Monitoring?

 If I have had Task Manager open when my MS Word problems appear, MsMpEng.exe is always at about 1/2 a core of CPU usage. Cancelling  MsMpEng.exe from Task Manager immediately frees the hang.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Yes to both questions

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Jomark

What version are you running?  I am using 4.0.1512.0.

I second Chuck as I have never had a problem with Microsoft security essentials and DNS.  I have real-time monitoring checked.  The reason I like this so much is that it doesn't consume as much resources as others such as Norton and McAfee.

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Bill
DNS Pro v12.5, KB 2012, Mtech Desktop PC (i7 960 3.2 gHz with 12 GB RAM), Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, 240 GB SSD, Philips SpeechMike 3500, SpeechWare 3-in-1 TableMike, Philips SpeechMike 5274 Classic, MS Office 2010 Professional

Bill,

Where did you get that version? Current version of Microsoft Security Essentials on the Microsoft download site is 2.1.1160.0. I don't see anywhere where the version to which you refer exists. Even if you're referring to MsMpEng.exe, the version number that is current with Microsoft Security Essentials is 3.0.8402.0



Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends." Herbert Hoover

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Interim update. I'm now running only about 40 processes besides DNS, Adobe X and Office 64 Bit. I have been working on several very long MS Word documents for various clients. With MS Security Essentials turned off I had no problem.

I restarted this morning after I had removed the "behavioral option" and added only the .DRA files to the "do not scan" list.

I had several Excel and PowerPoint documents open.

I dictated extensively into Excel and opened multiple midsize Word documents until I had about 10 open. I opened a template and begin dictating into Microsoft Word after about four hours of dictation into Excel and controlling the machine with DNS. When I hit "save as" on a one-page task list DNS and MS Word hung. Task Manager clearly showed MsMpEng.exe consistently using about one half of a core. using the task manager I killed MsMpEng.exe. This time Dragon crashed but MS Word recovered.

I then added the .doc and .docx to the "do not scan" After about few hours of dictation into various Word documents new and old, (a very similar work stream compared to the problems earlier today) I have not had any Word or DNS slowdowns.

I will continue with another very similar work stream tomorrow and if by the end of the day and had no problems I will undo the changes one by one to see if I can re-create the hang.

FWIW the configuration is:

Security Essentials Version: 2.1.1116.0
Antimalware Client Version: 3.0.8402.0
Engine Version: 1.1.8202.0
Antivirus definition: 1.123.786.0
Antispyware definition: 1.123.786.0
Network Inspection System Engine Version: 2.0.8001.0
Network Inspection System Definition Version: 11.0.0.0

Phil Schaadt

 

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Phil,

Microsoft office applications suffer from numerous memory leaks and are resource hogs. The more PowerPoint, spreadsheet, and Word documents you open, it doesn't surprise me that you're having a problem. Despite the improvements over the years, this is one area that Microsoft has absolutely failed to correct, even in Microsoft Office 2010.

Do you get an absolute hang (freeze) or do you simply get a "Not responding" message at the top of your document application window. The reason that I ask is that with that many Microsoft Office documents open at one time, it may simply take a long time to resolve such before everything starts responding again. This is not atypical in DNS 11.5, nor is it atypical in Microsoft Office applications.

When I duplicate your situation with the number of Microsoft Office applications and documents open, I get a similar response from Microsoft Security Essentials, but it resolves itself in about 2 min. It's not RAM because I'm running a Core™ i7 980X Extreme with 24 GB of 1877 MHz DDR3 RAM. It system resources.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"Life's Rule #1: Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend."  (Variant of Murphy's Law  -  Edward A. Murphy, Jr)

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Chuck, over the last two weeks I have seen about 25% "unexpected error" and the rest a hang which I cleared with killing the security process. I just went through the pro-forma motions of timing for killing a hang and estimated I could not have been responding in less than 15-20 seconds. With any pause or hang I wait at least 5 seconds and then try to turn of the DNS mic from the Dragon Bar (or keyboard shortcut). If the Word window goes white or just sits there with "not responding", I bring up Task Manager and visually scan for the offending process. I recover my work and then restart

What I described in my previous post is a fairly typical start of day workflow for me. I only started noticing these errors recently, hence my suspicions about a Microsoft update. After yesterday's exclusion of .doc, .dra and .docx from security scanning I am at hour four of today's similiar workflow with many PPT, excel and word docs. I am creating word docs, annotating them. editing them with save and save as and have had no apparent problem. Latency when switching between Word Doc instances is about 3 to seven seconds depending on size.

So far, my tentative conclusion is the problem occurs only when all of the following occur: Many Office docs AND Save or Save-As on a Word doc(x) where a .dra file is being created for the first time (since just excluding .dra alone did not stop the problems). I have not observed it with PPT or excel and I probably use the three formats equally.

No time for further changes today, but with a full day's work, I will open, read modify and save at least 100 different Office docs so i will see if there are any problems after excluding the three file types from security scanning. next is to exclude .doc and, docx but include .dra.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Update at hour 10. Same problem.

After a full day of PPT,  Excel, and Word docs, (Office 2010 64 bit), but despite not scanning .dra, doc, and docx, Word hung when responding to the 'do you want to save your dictation' and MsMpEng held steady in Task Manager at 1/2 a core. The other apps on my system were usable.

I waited about 5 minutes and finally killed MsMpEng. Word was still hung. I used "alt tab" to close each of the other Word docs (about 10) and when all the other Word docs were closed I could respond to the 'save dictation'. I suspect a scan was triggered because of my downloading one of the MS Word docs as an email attachment.

I will now restart with MS Security Essentials disabled to see if the problem can be reproduced by Word alone.

Update tomorrow.

Phil Schaadt

 

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Phils,

This might be a silly question but do you need or even want the option of saving dictation with your documents. This prompt appears to be adding additional stress to your system and can be deactivated via your DNS Options/Data (Tab) by changing Save recorded dictation with document from Ask me to Never.

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Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

Lunis, that's an interesting question. However since my last forum post, when I killed Microsoft Security Essentials, I have been saving the.DRA files on most of the documents as I've been creating. No problem and no visible system stress

I've been working 14 hour days across multiple client projects and according to my rough notes I have opened, saved, edited, created, received and sent over 100 MS Word documents, about 50 different Excel spreadsheets, 30+ PowerPoints, 50+ Adobe PDFs into miscellaneous Visios. Furthermore I've used four different web meeting products.

I have not restarted my machine, DNS or the office applications. Since killing Microsoft Security Essentials I have had zero problems with MS Word. Switching focus is at most 5 seconds and I have sent my autosave to 3 min.

I've had none of the problems that this thread and others have identified as "typical" behavior for MS Word.

At least on my machine, my conclusion is that the MsMpEng.exe is the immediate cause of the MS Word problems because when I cycle MsMpEng.exe on and off, as I did over the weekend, as soon as I turn it on have problems within hours . I've turned off and there are no problems so far after 28 hours and all of the documents.

I have no insight into true root cause (exact interaction of the programmatic level) but  I continue to be suspicious that this process ended up with some kind of incompatibility after a Microsoft update around the end of the year.

 I'm going to continue my experiment at least through the weekend as I have a bunch more documents to create and edit. I'll provide an update either when I have a Microsoft Word problem or when I finally get bored and restart my machine.

Any suggestions for additional failure mode tests independent of MsMpEng.exe are welcome.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Chuck - it is a beta of the next version...




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Bill
DNS Pro v12.5, KB 2012, Mtech Desktop PC (i7 960 3.2 gHz with 12 GB RAM), Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, 240 GB SSD, Philips SpeechMike 3500, SpeechWare 3-in-1 TableMike, Philips SpeechMike 5274 Classic, MS Office 2010 Professional