Is there a way to tell what Norton Security is doing at a given point in time?
For example, I will notice that my system's CPU fan all of a sudden kicks in and looking at Task Manager I see Norton Security is using from 50-80+ percent of the CPU cycles. This is not necessarily a problem but I'd sure like to know what's going on so that I might be able to tweak my NS settings etc. Is NS doing a Quick Scan? A Full Scan? Performance Optimization? Something else?
I have looked for log files that would indicate that some process just started but have not found anything useful.
I am using Windows 10 and v22.20 of Norton Security.
I don't use Norton on my WIn 10 machine but if you're still looking for a solution you can monitor the CPU consumed by nortonsecurity.exe in your Performance Graph (Performance | Graph | Usage | CPU tab - yellow peaks of CPU activity are for Norton processes; blue peaks are for non-Norton processes as shown below). The default time period for this graph is 90 min but you can zoom out the view to see up to 1 month of past activity. Then go to Settings | Administrative Settings | Background Tasks | Configure and leave that Window open to monitor the run times and duration of your background idletime Norton tasks like Automatic LiveUpdates, Norton Community Watch, etc. Note that tasks with a status of Canceled means a background task started during a system idle but was temporarily paused when your system came out of idle and will resume during the next system idle. Be sure to look for any tasks with a long Duration time as shown in m333617's thread Nortonsecurity.exe Running at High CPU for Long Time or tasks that run outside system idles as shown below. With any luck you might be able to match the Last Run time of a background Norton task with a yellow peak of nortonsecurity.exe CPU consumption in your Performance Graph.
There are several background tasks that can be disabled without affecting your Norton real-time protection if they appear to be consuming high amounts of CPU. For example, Norton has two disk defragmentation (optimization) tasks, and many Norton users disable these tasks and let Windows automatically handle disk optimization. The Norton Community Watch task that sends data telemetry back to Norton for analysis can also consume high amounts of system resources. I had an older legacy version of Norton Security Deluxe v22.15.2 on my Vista SP2 computer so these task settings might be in a slightly different location in your Norton Security v22.20.5:
Settings | Task Scheduling | Automatic Tasks | Disk Optimization (a scheduled defrag)
Settings | Administrative Settings | Norton Community Watch
If your high CPU consumption by nortonsecurity.exe occurs outside of system idles while you're working on your computer that type of problem can often be solved with a clean reinstall of your Norton product. Instructions are posted in cali grl's thread Norton Security Scan is AWOL.
If a clean reinstall doesn't help it's always possible that your Norton real-time protection is "waking up" to monitor some process it doesn't fully trust or some process that's causing a real-time conflict with Norton. For example, see the comments in CyberNinja15's One Instance of NortonSecurity.exe High CPU about past problems caused by the Native Image Generator (NGEN) optimization task in Task Scheduler for Microsoft .NET Framework. Let us know if you have (or previously had) another third-party antivirus program (e.g., Avast, Kaspersky, McAfee, Malwarebytes Premium, etc.) or some other security program that can load at Windows startup and run in real-time protection mode, including trial versions that might have been installed at the factory. If you uninstalled another third-party antivirus from the Control Panel there may still be stray registry entries and files that will have to be wiped off your system with the manufacturer's removal tool (if necessary, we can provide a download link) so these remnants don't interfere with your Norton product.
-------------
64-bit Win 10 Pro v1909 build 18363.1198 * Firefox v84 * Windows Defender v4.18.2011.6 * Malwarebytes Free v4.3.0
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620
There are several background tasks that can be disabled without affecting your Norton real-time protection if they appear to be consuming high amounts of CPU. For example, Norton has two disk defragmentation (optimization) tasks, and many Norton users disable these tasks and let Windows automatically handle disk optimization. The