Nope, scratch that. Came home to a computer that was not sleeping, fans full tilt, 130% CPU is use by symdaemon. No idea how to stop it from doing this.
Back to using ClamXav. It is hard for me to believe that free/shareware is more stable than a commercial product. 
Any fix yet?
JFRASER98 said:
> Any fix yet?
It seems that the solution posted by the Symantec Employee on 10/28/13 is to turn off the Automatic Protection feature of Norton AntiVirus. There was no further advice provided by Symantec.
I think I have suggested in private messages turning off Idle Scan protection to see if that had helped, in order to rule out that feature as the culprit. That feature should only kick in when the Mac is idle but on 10.9 things changed a lot in that area.
I saw your earlier messages and I immediately turned it off. I noticed when I have "Virus Protection" on it goes the Symdaemon increases from 0.2 - 90%+ or higher. When I turn it off, no issue. I'm using Norton 360 Multi Device for my mac..
Can you clarify what you mean by Virus Protection? There are two features in Norton AntiVirus' Virus Protection category (three if you are using just Norton AntiVirus and not Norton Internet Security) ."Automatic Virus Scanning and "Idle-Time Virus Scanning". I suggested turning of Idle-Time Virus Scanning.
To give some background, Idle Scan does a full system scan of your Mac when it is idle (theoretically). It can catch some viruses that may have already been running on your Mac when you installed. It is basically like going into Norton AntiVirus and scanning your Mac whenever you leave your computer for a couple of hours.
Automatic Virus Scanning will protect your Mac whenever you download or create a new file. That is the most important feature to have enabled since most threats come via email or on the Web, and Automatic Virus Scanning will catch them whenever they are downloaded to your Mac. I am pretty confident leaving that feature enabled should not affect your performance like is described in the forums here.I think that problem is with Idle Scan, which should only enable when your Mac is idle, but unfortunately in 10.9 is kicking when while you are still using your Mac.
Thanks for the update. I will try turning the idle-time scan feature off and enabling the virus protection to see if that helps.
When it's been taking 90% CPU turning off the virus protection, then turning it back on has at least temporarily restored symdaemon to normal.
Come to think of it on my MacBook Pro I don't get the message that the scan completed, on my wife's iMac I get the message whenever the computer has been idle for a time. Will post an update if your suggestion helps or does not.
Hello Ryan,
I, as well as others, are wondering what is the update for the Symdaemon eating up our Mac's CPU?
As I stated before, it started for me a week or so before Mavericks 10.9 came out. So I don't think it's specifically affecting just Mavericks. As on both of my Mac Minis that were running Mt Lion was being affected by the CPU usage.
Below is a picture of an app on my iPhone that monitors my Mac Mini from afar. iStat Pro by bjango is the name of it. I had to crop it down little by little in order to achieve the forums picture size, so forgive the choppiness. I took this picture on Oct 29, As you can see in the 30 day window into the 7 day window. The CPU was higher than normal. And Well before Mavericks came out. I do recall a major update of the Norton AV on Friday the 18th. Which appears to be when the CPU usage started to go up. It wasn't until Monday or Tuesday that I noticed the usage. I then figured that upgrading to Mavericks would help. Well as you can see, it did not help.
As suggested by ryan_mcgann from Symantec, I turned on Automatic Virus Scanning and turned off Idle-Time Virus Scanning. Since then, the symdaemon has not been a noticeable CPU hog. Thanks!
I agree that "Automatic Virus Scanning" is more important than "Idle-Time Virus Scanning," yet, Idle Time scanning provides significant additional protection and should be made fully functional by Symantec as soon as possible.
Turning off "idle-time scanning" seems to have fixed the symdaemon issue. At times it goes up to 65-70% CPU use but then settles right back down to 1-3%.
Any time frame on a fix to the idle scan issue? It was a nice feature when it used to work.
Am having the same issue on 10.8.5 even with idle scans disabled. TOTALLY frustrating. NAV 12.6. Latest updates.
I'm running OS X 10.8.5 and with Norton Internet Security 12.6 (26) I'm also seeing this. I'm attaching the output from the sample command in case it helps anyone. I have Idle Scan disabled and still have the problem. I tried the recommendation of disabling Virus Protection, but isn't that the same as not having it running at all? If so, then what's the point of having the product installed?
I too am experiencing temporary system hang-ups (same high CPU with symdaemon), running OS X 10.7.5 on a MacBook Pro with Internet Security product. After much trouble-shooting, it seems to be tied to Anti-Virus. When I disable Anti-Virus, system runs fine. When I turn it back on, the system hangs occur every couple of minutes and last for 10-15 seconds. Product/Liveupdates are current. I can't say for sure when this started occurring but it's been a few months.
megavolt17 wrote on 10-26-2013 07:27 AM:
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...
bmcneely0 wrote on 12-12-2013:
... I have Idle Scan disabled and still have the problem. I tried the recommendation of disabling Virus Protection, but isn't that the same as not having it running at all? If so, then what's the point of having the product installed?
jcosta wrote on 01-10-2014:
... When I disable Anti-Virus, system runs fine. When I turn it back on, the system hangs occur every couple of minutes and last for 10-15 seconds. Product/Liveupdates are current. I can't say for sure when this started occurring but it's been a few months.
I agree with bmcneely0 and jcosta. The lack of progress in resolving this issue is mysterious, at least as seen in this forum. Has there been any progress?
Does anybody know if the latest update fixes this issue? A Norton update required a computer restart so something more than just the virus definitions was updated. I don't see any update history or information on the web site.
I have Norton Antivirus version 12.6 (26).
I sure hope so... I just installed it...
For me... it only happens when I'm idle for a few minutes... Then symdaemon goes nuts... and the fans go on full speed... So annoying while I'm in class.
Luckily, a quick touch of the trackpad makes it stop..
And I agree it seems like it must be the idle scan. But disabling it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Hopefully this update fixes it... if not... :(
