This is a message for the Norton employees who monitor this forum.
Like many other people who have posted here, ccsvchst.exe is causing my cpu to go nuts. I have read many posts and tried a number of things without luck. The bottomline is that NIS should not be hogging my resources ... period. My subscription expires at the end of the month and if you cannot provide me with a resonable solution, I will let it expire and find another solution to my security needs. Keep these two things in mind ---
--This problem has been around a long time -- you should have fixed it.
--The "solved" threads are incoherant and involved days of work by serious geeks -- I am a simple customer who doesn't think I should have to have a phd in computer engineering and days of free time to use your product.
Can you help me or should I start looking elsewhere?
Your system specs look great. I forgot to ask how long had NIS 2011 been installed.
After the initial installation, NIS will run a number of background tasks to become acclimated to your computer. That is the only time I have seen higher than normal CPU usage and I have NIS 2011 running on a number of computers with XP, Vista and Win7. Many of the machines are quite less powerful than yours.
Could the high usage have occurred during a scan? If so, that can be trouble shooted.
I have had NIS 2011 on since it became available; it was an uprgrade from NIS 2010. I have it running on my XP laptop and my wife's Windows 7 desktop too, with no problems. The high CPU usage often happens after a scan. If I reboot, it someteimes goes away, only to return within a few hours.
I"m not hijacking this thread. Just adding my own experience to show there really is something wrong here. I've been using NIS 2011 since Jan 2011 (and before that NIS for about 3 years). Around Feb 2011, my CPU started going to 15% usage on idle and it was all the Symantec Service Framework. I upgraded to NIS 2012 beta to see if that would fix the issue and it did for a few days. Eventually the high CPU usage came back. I contacted tech support some time later and we uninstalled NIS 2012 beta and put NIS 2011 back on. I told support I had the issue with NIS 2011 as well but no matter let's keep charging forward. Two days later high CPU issue was back. Contacted support again and changed some settings. After a reboot support never came back. Now my CPU is running at 30% utilization on idle and has been like this for months. I like NIS but now that I can show an increased cost $$ on my power bill (I have a power meter attached) by using NIS, this could be my last year.
I'm also a victim of this issue and my nerves are very stressed. I have this issue since some weeks now.
Why can Norton not fix this issue????
No actions of Norton Antivirus are executed, but Norton uses one CPU completely all the time.
Sometimes it stops after half an hour, but it surely starts some minutes later.
I have already deinstalled Norton Antivirus two times, but this helped not much. After one or two hours this behaviour reappeared.
One CPU is nearly constantly used by Norton AntiVir. Even I/O is nearly zero, i.e. no scanning of file system or access of network. With process explorer from Sysinternals I can see, that it is one single thread (start address ntdll.dll!TpCllbackMayRunLong+0x103). The thread ID changes after half an hour. Then ccsvchost is quiet for minutes, but then starts again. After halft an hour there are more than 2 billions cycle deltas. I did not success to dump the thread stack.
If this issue is not resolved in the very near future, I will switch to another AntiVir software. I need the CPUs of my computer myself.
My subscription was up on September 1 and I did not renew. I am now using Microsoft Defender. I am sure there are better options, but Norton is not one of them. It protects my computer very well, but customer service sucks. My first problem was the full scan hanging up and not finishing. Customer service told me to run it in safe mode. What is the point? I want it to run automatically in the middle of the night. I don't want to have to manually restart in safe mode to scan my disc. When I got some malware, customer service told me to download a program that would clean my computer. It didn't work. Customer service then said they would fix it for $100. Why am I paying a subscription fee when I have to pay extra when the program misses a virus? This business with the CPU was the final straw. No help solving the problem.
I also want to answer the questions you asked Neal.
Which Norton Product and version (year) you are using? (Main Norton Interface > Support > About Norton AntiVirus 2011 Version:18.6.0.29
How was the current product installed - from disc or download? Was it installed "overtop" the previous version? Completely deinstall and reinstalled from download
What security software did you have prior to Norton? Was it completely uninstalled? Don't think this matters, as I'm using Norton AntiVirus for years now
Do you have any other security software currently installed? no, but Windows defender is active
Did you scan your system for malware before attempting the installation? no,
What type of CPU and what amount of RAM do you have? AMD Athlon X2 BE-2300 (Dual Core), 4 GB
Also, if you can tell us which operating system you are using along with the service pack, that would further help us with diagnosing your issue. Vista 64bit, Service Pack 2 (automatic update is enabled)
With Sysinternals ProcessExplorer I succeeded in making a minidump of ccsvchst.exe. As your system does not allow to add it as attachment, give me an Email address if you want it.
I have had the same trouble with norton internet security 2011 with high cpu usage.
I have found by turning off email protection the issue has gone away and I just use other means to protect my email now
I don't know why exactly it works but if you are in a jam you might try it hopefully it gives a spark of inspiration to norton on what is wrong with their program and finally patch it!
Well it's been about 8 months since this issue started and three calls to Norton support but I *think* I may have resolved my issue. I was using process explorer to find out what the Symantec service was doing but all I could tell is that it would use a constant 15% CPU and sometimes a constant 30%. After going back and reading all the responses on this board, I noticed some were using process monitor (procmon) to find out what the service was doing. I downloaded that tool this time around. Lo and behold I notice the symantec service writing a tmp file in c:\windows\temp once every few seconds. It looks like the tmp file names weren't unique enough as there was a "NAME COLLISION" notice from process monitor. A further look into the C:\windows\temp directory showed 300,000+ .tmp files all created by the symantec service. So, I restarted in safe mode and deleted all the files in that folder. After reboot, my system has been without the dreaded CPU issue and procmon is clear. I"m still not 100% convinced the issue is resolved so I will update the status later on. Just something else to check.
Well it's been about 8 months since this issue started and three calls to Norton support but I *think* I may have resolved my issue. I was using process explorer to find out what the Symantec service was doing but all I could tell is that it would use a constant 15% CPU and sometimes a constant 30%. After going back and reading all the responses on this board, I noticed some were using process monitor (procmon) to find out what the service was doing. I downloaded that tool this time around. Lo and behold I notice the symantec service writing a tmp file in c:\windows\temp once every few seconds. It looks like the tmp file names weren't unique enough as there was a "NAME COLLISION" notice from process monitor. A further look into the C:\windows\temp directory showed 300,000+ .tmp files all created by the symantec service. So, I restarted in safe mode and deleted all the files in that folder. After reboot, my system has been without the dreaded CPU issue and procmon is clear. I"m still not 100% convinced the issue is resolved so I will update the status later on. Just something else to check.
So it's been almost a week and the issue has not returned. Number of files in that directory now number 19. Finally, my PC can idle after months of chewing up CPU.
I'm also a victim of this issue and my nerves are very stressed. I have this issue since some weeks now.
Why can Norton not fix this issue????
No actions of Norton Antivirus are executed, but Norton uses one CPU completely all the time.
Sometimes it stops after half an hour, but it surely starts some minutes later.
I have already deinstalled Norton Antivirus two times, but this helped not much. After one or two hours this behaviour reappeared.
One CPU is nearly constantly used by Norton AntiVir. Even I/O is nearly zero, i.e. no scanning of file system or access of network. With process explorer from Sysinternals I can see, that it is one single thread (start address ntdll.dll!TpCllbackMayRunLong+0x103). The thread ID changes after half an hour. Then ccsvchost is quiet for minutes, but then starts again. After halft an hour there are more than 2 billions cycle deltas. I did not success to dump the thread stack.
If this issue is not resolved in the very near future, I will switch to another AntiVir software. I need the CPUs of my computer myself.
About my machine:
Vista 64bit (SP2)
AMD Athlon X2 (Dual Core BE 2300)
4 GB RAM
Hi Martin,
I'm sorry that you are having this problem and also that it took you so long to come here for assistance. Part of the reason there has been no 'fix' by Norton is that there hasn't been a clear problem defined that Norton can fix. You've posted a couple of messages since this one so I'm going to go to one of them to continue so I can review your comments as I respond.
I also want to answer the questions you asked Neal.
Which Norton Product and version (year) you are using? (Main Norton Interface > Support > About Norton AntiVirus 2011 Version:18.6.0.29
How was the current product installed - from disc or download? Was it installed "overtop" the previous version? Completely deinstall and reinstalled from download
What security software did you have prior to Norton? Was it completely uninstalled? Don't think this matters, as I'm using Norton AntiVirus for years now
Do you have any other security software currently installed? no, but Windows defender is active
Did you scan your system for malware before attempting the installation? no,
What type of CPU and what amount of RAM do you have? AMD Athlon X2 BE-2300 (Dual Core), 4 GB
Also, if you can tell us which operating system you are using along with the service pack, that would further help us with diagnosing your issue. Vista 64bit, Service Pack 2 (automatic update is enabled)
With Sysinternals ProcessExplorer I succeeded in making a minidump of ccsvchst.exe. As your system does not allow to add it as attachment, give me an Email address if you want it.
A textual summary I have attached as text.
Me again Martin,
Not doing at least a control panel uninstall of some of the older products leaves bits of trash around for the newer programs to trip over. Tony, the moderator here, has sent you a message so I'll wait until you two sort things out be fore jumping in and making recommendations on how I'd recommend you start to fix your problems.