My MacBook Pro is running hot with fans on high since upgrading to OS X 10.9. Checking out Activity Monitor shows that symdaemon is using 90-120% CPU constantly. I've used LiveUpdate and made sure that I have the latest versions of everything in NIS.
If I use Activity Monitor to quit symdaemon all is well for a little while, then symdaemon starts again. At first it uses 20-30% CPU but eventually climbs back to 90%+.
I have found a partial solution. It seems that disabling "Idle-Time Scan" prevents this from happening. Come to think of it since upgrading to OS X 10.9 I've never gotten the message that the scan completed.
Running the same OS and NIS version on my wife's iMac seems to have no problems. The only difference I can think of is that I have a BC partition and a second internal hard drive in my MacBook Pro. I have Virus Protection setting set to not scan my Windows 8 partition, I don't see any way to configure Idle-Scan to ignore the Windows 8 partition.
Hm, it's odd that Activity Monitor cannot sample. Sorry for the problems.
Can you please try running the following from the command line:
sudo sample SymDaemon
You can run this by opening Terminal in Applications -> Utilities, and copying the above command into the Terminal window. You'll need your administrator password. Copy & paste the output here.
If that doesn't work we can try another command:
/usr/libexec/stackshot
That command takes a while to execute, and writes its output to a file. Please post here, or send via private message, the contents of /Library/Logs/stackshot.log
The output exceeds 20,000 characters so I can't paste it here. I will attach it as an RTF file. Well the web page does not like RTF files, so will try as a PFD.
My MacBook Pro is running hot with fans on high since upgrading to OS X 10.9. Checking out Activity Monitor shows that symdaemon is using 90-120% CPU constantly. I've used LiveUpdate and made sure that I have the latest versions of everything in NIS.
If I use Activity Monitor to quit symdaemon all is well for a little while, then symdaemon starts again. At first it uses 20-30% CPU but eventually climbs back to 90%+.
I have found a partial solution. It seems that disabling "Idle-Time Scan" prevents this from happening. Come to think of it since upgrading to OS X 10.9 I've never gotten the message that the scan completed.
Running the same OS and NIS version on my wife's iMac seems to have no problems. The only difference I can think of is that I have a BC partition and a second internal hard drive in my MacBook Pro. I have Virus Protection setting set to not scan my Windows 8 partition, I don't see any way to configure Idle-Scan to ignore the Windows 8 partition.
First thanks for the information. It's really helpful.
It does indicate that Idle Scanning is not the problem, as you noticed. It looks like AutoProtect is just continously scanning. You can verify this by turning off the Automatic Protection feature of Norton AntiVirus as a test. If that fixes the problem, that sounds like the culprit.
If that is indeed the case, make sure Automatic Protection is on, and please try running this command in Terminal (it sounds like you're rather proficient, so I am going to skip some steps).
sudo fs_usage -f file -w SymDaemon
Let it run for a good 5-10 seconds, then hit Control-C to stop it, and send us the output. Hopefully that'll give us an indication of what it's continously scanning. Thanks for the help in investigating this issue with us.
Turning off auto-protect decreased symdaemon to 0% CPU use. It does seem that auto-protect is the culpret. Of course without it NAV is pretty useless.
After turning it off, symdaemon acts normally for a while when I turn it back on. I'll wait a while and when it's "going crazy" again I'll run the command and see what output it reveals. Ah, here it goes up to 68% after opening a few programs and surfing the net.
I am having the same problem with SymDaemon. However, mine started before 10.9 and it would seem that turning off idle scan works. According to my iStat Pro app on my iPhone, it would appear that the SymDaemon started to use the CPU right around Oct 18. Which the same day that an Update of Norton occurred.
My problem is on at least 2 of my 3 Macs. Not entirely sure about the 3rd as I don't have access to it all the time.
If you want me to run a scan or what not, please let me know on how to do that. I kind of understand it, but not really.
I am running Mac OS X 10.9 on an early-2011 MBP 17"
The Norton Internet Security software I have installed is that which is distributed by Xfinity.
I too have found that if I disable AntiVirus, SymDaemon backs off of the CPU.
I used fs_usage and saw that network-attached drives where being scanned. I then when into the AntiVirus configuration and specified that only the SSD boot disk and the spindle data disk (in the optical drive bay) should be scanned. I then stopped and started Anti Virus protection.
My CPU usage dropped from about 200% to 80%.
I see that the output of fs_usage also included lines where something is happening with /Volumes/ReadyNAS. When I am in the terminal, there is no such directory. The two network-attached storage systems I have are ReadyNAS devices, but I see them as "nas" and "nas-v2" on my network. I don't understand why Norton is messing around with /Volumes/ReadyNAS
Norton is telling me that I have to reboot my Mac now that it has updated its data, so I'll go ahead and do that and then repeat the fs_usage to see if it still has output that is associated with /Volumes/ReadyNAS
I know that Symantec representatives monitor this traffic, and I've uploaded captured files they have asked for. Likely this will take several days or weeks to work out. The reps report to the programmers, but they have no way to know how long it will take for them to fix the problem
If this helps find a solution, I'm still running 10.8.5 and observe that opening any new web page with Chrome triggers triggers ~100% SymDaemon for 10 to 60 seconds. Opening the same pages in Safari or Firefox does not trigger this behavior.
Anyone else noticing their Macs crashing with Norton Internet Security installed? My MacBook Pro has been crashing 2-3 times a day, even if it's just sitting and doing nothing. I've uninstalled Norton Internet Security for now - so far not a single crash (knock on wood). I think I'll wait for an update to NIS and then try it again.
Norton had been pretty trouble free until I upgraded to Mavericks, of course as pointed out by others there also was a recent patch for Norton Antivirus so it could be that and not Mavericks causing the problem.
I am not experiencing any crashing at all in OS X 10.9 with Norton installed and running. Is there anything in Console that might shed some light on what is happening with your MBP?
Probably, but there are so many messages there that without more knowledge than I have it makes little sense. I've looked at the logs the computer sends to Apple about the crash and don't see any drivers or programs that are anything other than standard Apple files/programs. Of course it could be some program or driver that is conflicting with an Apple driver or program, which makes it harder to sort out.
Activity Monitor helped find the program using all my CPU, but of course does not identify the cause or a crash. At least now I'm reasonably sure that NIS is not to blame for the crashes.
Just to add a 'me too' to this thread. I have the same problem on my iMac i7 and I'm pretty sure I had it before I went to 10.9 but I didn't actually check Activity Monitor until after that.
I tried the latest build of Norton Interned Security, same problem.
I used the Symantec installer and this time only installed Norton Antivirus. It seems that Norton firewall and the Norton identity cause no problems. There are only problems if Norton Antivirus is installed and active.
Whenever symdaemon is "going crazy" it also seems that mdworker (multiple copies) is active, sometimes ocspd too. They too are using a lot of CPU resources. Removing Norton Antivirus seems to resolve this issue. Must be some sort of conflict between symdaemon and mdworker (and possibly ocspd).
I guess I'm back to using ClamXav. I wonder if Norton will give us a credit for the time that we are unable to use Norton Antivirus...
It seems that symdaemon is trying to scan the timemachine files, and since they keep changing during a backup it never finishes. To stop symdaemon from scanning backed up files do this.
If using Time Capsule mount your data disk (,you will need to know the password you used to set it up). Once that is mounted, you will see the icon for it on your desktop (mine is called Data). Now open Norton Antivirus, click the "Automatic Protection" tab. To the right of "Virus Protection" click the "configure' button. Now click the "Don't Scan" button. Then drag your backup disk to the window to the right of the button. Leave the "Don't Scan" button selected.
Oddly specifying to only scan certain files/places does not seem to work. Only by telling NAV what NOT to scan was I able to prevent Symdaemon from using 100% of 1 CPU. Hope this helps.