NAV 2011: Very annoying disk I/O harddisk activity

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

Having aquired and installed Norton Antivirus 2011 I am becoming increasingly annoyed with the extremely heavy and noisy disk activity:


In 3 hours = 10,800 seconds (PC has been on)

the program (process) ccSvcHst.exe has performed

I/O-read: 548,000 = 50.7 reads/second

I/O-write: 63,600 = 5.9 writes/second


This is simply too much ... Please tell me how to REDUCE the disk activity!

 

Also I find it completely out of order to tell me that my computer is at risk (Danish: "Din computer er i fare") and putting a white cross in a red circle on the icon in task bar. - I have disabled SONAR because I find it superfluous and hypocondriatic.

 

Regards

Claus A.

2

Lyngby DK 2.2.2011

 

Delphinium: Thanks for the reply and the hints regarding checkmarks and red cross-marks.

 

My previous AV-SW was from Norton as well. It was removed with Norton_Removal_Tool.exe before installation of NAV 2011.

 

Inspired by your remark I performed a total system scan, which revealed a couple of non-critical tracking cookies, deleted in due course.

 

But ccSvcHst.exe continues to read and write excessively - at the time I'm writing this: During 1 hour 15 minutes (= 4500 seconds) the program has maged 704,000 I/O reads (156 reads/sec) and 236,000 I/O writes (= 52 writes/sec). - I am not aware of any 'different issue' - what do you have in mind? - I am very anxious to reduce these numbers, otherwise I may have to renounce using NAV 2011 ...

 

Regards

Claus A.

 

3

Having aquired and installed Norton Antivirus 2011 I am becoming increasingly annoyed with the extremely heavy and noisy disk activity:


In 3 hours = 10,800 seconds (PC has been on)

the program (process) ccSvcHst.exe has performed

I/O-read: 548,000 = 50.7 reads/second

I/O-write: 63,600 = 5.9 writes/second


This is simply too much ... Please tell me how to REDUCE the disk activity!

 

Also I find it completely out of order to tell me that my computer is at risk (Danish: "Din computer er i fare") and putting a white cross in a red circle on the icon in task bar. - I have disabled SONAR because I find it superfluous and hypocondriatic.

 

Regards

Claus A.

4

 

delphinium wrote:

Hi e-claus:

 

Did you remove any other antivirus software on your machine, using the appropriate removal tool,  prior to installing NAV 2011?  It will need to perform a full system scan.  Once it finishes its installation tasks, it should settle down unless there is a different issue.

 

 

This is in fact a different issue, one that has perturbed me for well over a year now. I even posted about it myself back in 2010.

 

If you run ProcessMonitor by Sysinternals and set the filter to only include ccSvcHst.exe, you will see an incredible number of registry and disk access operations.

 

In fact, in the 30 seconds it took me to write this post I had 36,966 "events" listed in ProcessMonitor. The annoying part of it is in a quiet room you can actually hear the disk activity every few seconds.

5

What operating systems and service packs are you both using?  Sorry MrSmite, I don't recall yours if it was posted.  Both my machines are very quiet, so the problem may be systemic, or related to other software.  Are either of you running Acronis backup software, searching or indexing going on in Microsoft?

 

Norton will scan everything going in or out of memory, so the more things that are happening in the machine will increase the scans.  Auto defraggers are another cause for this type of behaviour.

6

The numbers of reads and writes e-claus describes are (unfortunately) standard. There is no fix because there is nothing to fix. This is how NIS reads and writes during normal operations.

7

If this is how NAV 2011 operates, I'll have to find another antimalware (& -virus) system. This is completely intolerable.

 

I get the impression that the Norton people want to save ourselves from our ourselves - just like Microsoft - by taking over our pc's instead of just supplying the tools with comprehensive and easy-to-understand user manuals.

 

regards and thanks for the replies

Claus A.

 

 

 

8

HI e-claus,

 

Curious, are you seeing an actual problem with the computer not being responsive or slow to react to user input? Or are you just annoyed at the "numbers" you are seeing?

 

The vast majority of users cannot even tell that Norton is running most of the time.

 

In fact, over the years Norton has gotten so much lighter in terms of CPU and memory resources that a lot of users who left Norton some years ago has returned because of just how much improvement there has been!

 

If your computer meets the minimum system requirements you should not even notice it running most of the time. If you are having problems with high CPU utilization or memory usage of NAV, then there is probably something we should look into and get it corrected. Otherwise perhaps you should not be so concerned about "numbers" but more about how well it protects your computer. Norton is consistently rated near the top of the list in terms of the protection it offers.

 

Just my two cents worth.

 

Best wishes.

Allen

9

I am interested in knowing what precisely NIS is doing during those read/write instances, so I can make an intelligent decision as to whether I want those to continue. If I choose to disable features running in the background, I expect that that would apply to NIS as well.

10

Lyngby DK 19.2.2011 20:28 (please do not use US date format)

 

I'm hearing the harddisk access numbers - and seeing them as well using Windows Taskmanager enhanced with Prio. The frequency is as described in my first posting of 31.01.2011. The excessive disk activity does not see to slow down the machine - it is just extremely annoying an irritating.

 

I do not know why or what NAV 2011 is doing performing these I/O-readings and -writings.

 

My system is a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM, running Windows XP SP2 (save possible remarks about SP3). 2 harddisks 76 GB & 240 GB.

 

Regards

Claus A.

11

> are you seeing an actual problem with the computer not being responsive or slow to react to user input?
> Or are you just annoyed at the "numbers" you are seeing?

 

That's avoiding the OP's point.  And MrSmite's.

 

e-claus:
> During 1 hour 15 minutes (= 4500 seconds) the program has managed 704,000 I/O reads (156 reads/sec)
> and 236,000 I/O writes (= 52 writes/sec).

 

MrSmite:
> in the 30 seconds it took me to write this post I had 36,966 "events" listed in ProcessMonitor.

 

e-c and MS, check two things. You just need to be sure,

 

1) that NIS is not doing an idle scan.  If you leave ProcessExplorer running/open you would see ccsvchst.exe activity, plus a pop-up from NIS.

 

2) that it's not running defrag [shakes head].
  Settings -> Miscellaneous Settings -> Idle Time Optimizer -> Off

 

I suppose there is also a 3).  You need to be certain that it isn't doing something that is really necessary.  With ProcessExplorer look at all the processes that are running and see if there is anything there that looks peculiar.

 

MAH:
> I am interested in knowing what precisely NIS is doing during those read/write instances,
> so I can make an intelligent decision as to whether I want those to continue.

 

That's a fair question.  I hope someone from Symantec will answer it.

 

AM's point (of asking that question) is correct on a _relative_ basis.  The current NIS is _far_ from the resource hog that it once was.  I left it behind for a competitor years ago for that reason.  I returned a year or two ago after reading reviews that said that it was no longer true.  They were right.  Well, again, at least on a relative basis.  But even on an absolute basis I don't "sense" NIS running on any of the three computers that we have it on.

 

I have Microsoft Security Essentials (which reviews well for anti-malware protection) on one of our computers, but you can _really_ tell that it is running. Worse than the old years-ago versions of Norton ever were.  And this is the new v. 2 MSE.

 

On the one hand:
Few people post in this forum about NIS using too much resources.  You should explore further to see if you have something going on on your computer that is causing this.

 

On the other hand:
No product is perfect.  There is no excuse for NIS to be doing anything that is not _directly_ needed to protect the computer.  A (bad) example of that is defrag.  So ... there could be other things like that going on.  Or a bug.