problems with McAfee VirusScan

[Nadav Popplewell]

Hi everybody,
I'm using visual studio 2003 to develope web&windows applications in csharp.
Some time ago, the company upgraded to McAfee ViruScan v8.0.0.
Since then the visual studio has slowed down to unacceptable performance
(several MINUTES to open a project it's take around 10 SECONDS to open when
the Scan-On-Access is disabled).
The same kind of performance problems happen with source safe (checking
in/out).
I've talked to the guy at McAfee support, and apparently he's not familiar
with this problem with visual studio.
He's asked me to send him the list of file extentions and/or programs to
exclude from the Scan-On-Access.
I'm not sure which file extentions I should exclude (beside .cs,.csproj,.sln)

Has anybody had this problem with McAfee, and solved it?
And if the solution was to switch to another antivirus, what would you
recommend?

["Peter Huang" [MSFT]]

Hi

I think the Antivirus software scan prevented the IDE load file quickly.
So we did not have such a list, but I think you may try to use the filemon
tool to see what may be the accessed when we used IDE.
FileMon
http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/filemon.html

Because I did not have the experience to use McAfee ViruScan v8.0.0, I
think we can wait to see if other communities have any suggestion.

Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi,

I run VS2003 and VS2005 on a big network with SourceSafe 6 and VirusScan
Enterprise v7, and performance is good, and a lot better than with
Norton or Sophos. However, I have never tried v8. I seem to remember
someone else said v8 was slow and that's why I didn't upgrade.

You need to first establish whether the problem is at the client or
server; in other words test it on a stand-alone computer that does not
have a network connection - do you see the same behavior?

Post by Nadav Popplewell
Hi everybody,
I'm using visual studio 2003 to develope web&windows applications in csharp.
Some time ago, the company upgraded to McAfee ViruScan v8.0.0.
Since then the visual studio has slowed down to unacceptable performance
(several MINUTES to open a project it's take around 10 SECONDS to open when
the Scan-On-Access is disabled).
The same kind of performance problems happen with source safe (checking
in/out).
I've talked to the guy at McAfee support, and apparently he's not familiar
with this problem with visual studio.
He's asked me to send him the list of file extentions and/or programs to
exclude from the Scan-On-Access.
I'm not sure which file extentions I should exclude (beside .cs,.csproj,.sln)
Has anybody had this problem with McAfee, and solved it?
And if the solution was to switch to another antivirus, what would you
recommend?

[Nadav Popplewell]

Hi Gerry,

It's definitely on the client:
As soon as I disable the Virus-Scan On-Access option on the client computer
(double clicking on the tray-icon, clicking disable) the performance improves.

The really strange thing about the whole thing is that the slowing down does
NOT seem to be because the virus-Scan uses too much CPU cycles.
You look at the task manager cpu statistics and it shows some thing like 2-3
percent for the McAfee MCShield, another 2-3 percent for the devenv, but
nothing moves.
As soon as you disable the Virus-Scan the CPU usage of the devenv jumps and
it starts to load the projects.

Weird...

Nadav

[Gerry Hickman]

OK.

Post by Nadav Popplewell
As soon as you disable the Virus-Scan the CPU usage of the devenv jumps and
it starts to load the projects.
Weird...

You are right; that is not expected at all. It's as if VirusScan is
blocking in a message loop (not using CPU but still preventing files to
be released).

One option would be to exclude all file types you can think of, then see
if it's fast? If it is, gradually re-include each file type until you
find the type that's causing the problem. Also try things like disabling
detection of "unknown" macros etc. Any change?

If it was VS2005 it would make more sense, because that app has it's own
performance issues and it can also overload NetBIOS command queues and
overload monitoring of "FileSystem changes", you'd expect race
conditions with AV software, but VS2003 is exempt from all this.

Have you tried posting this on any of the McAcfee forums (if they have
such things).

["Peter Huang" [MSFT]]

Hi Nadav,

I did not know how the McAfee implements its Virus-Scan.
But I guess the Virus-Scan On-Access will lock the file till the Virus-Scan
On-Access make sure the file is safe.
That may explain your scenario.

Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Nadav Popplewell]

Yesterday they added more memory to my Computer (from 512MB to 1024MB)
and for some reason this seems to have solve the problem of the VirusScan.
Strange....

Nadav

Post by Nadav Popplewell
Hi Gerry,
As soon as I disable the Virus-Scan On-Access option on the client computer
(double clicking on the tray-icon, clicking disable) the performance improves.
The really strange thing about the whole thing is that the slowing down does
NOT seem to be because the virus-Scan uses too much CPU cycles.
You look at the task manager cpu statistics and it shows some thing like 2-3
percent for the McAfee MCShield, another 2-3 percent for the devenv, but
nothing moves.
As soon as you disable the Virus-Scan the CPU usage of the devenv jumps and
it starts to load the projects.
Weird...
Nadav

[Gerry Hickman]

Post by Nadav Popplewell
Yesterday they added more memory to my Computer (from 512MB to 1024MB)
and for some reason this seems to have solve the problem of the VirusScan.
Strange....

OK that's good to know, but 1024 is a bit absurd for a client PC! It
would be good to monitor the memory on a different PC that has not been
upgraded and see if VirusScan is hogging too much.

--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)

[Nadav Popplewell]

Hi Gerry,
We had the same problem with other computers in the office (all with
winXP-sp2,512MB running visual studio 2003).
And in all computers that had the memory enlarged to 1GB the problem was
solved.

Yes, I agree that 1024MB is too much for a client PC, but since we were
adding the memory anyway, solving the problem with the AntiVirus was a very
nice bonus :)

Nadav

[Kiran Jain]

try installing McAfee Patch 11

Post by Nadav Popplewell
Hi Gerry,
We had the same problem with other computers in the office (all with
winXP-sp2,512MB running visual studio 2003).
And in all computers that had the memory enlarged to 1GB the problem was
solved.
Yes, I agree that 1024MB is too much for a client PC, but since we were
adding the memory anyway, solving the problem with the AntiVirus was a very
nice bonus :)
Nadav