Slowdown of Microsoft Visual Studio due to different Virus scanner

Question

I haven't really done any measurements, but what I usually do is to exclude the real time scanning of my development folder (usually my :\Projects folder). That way, the compiler can work as fast as possible during my everyday repetitive tasks. I do have a daily scan that have the folder in question in its path, in order to fetch any possible threat. On a subjective note, I prefer to use NOD32.

Based on previous installations at various jobs, empirically rated from slowest (very annoying) to quickest (almost no impact):

• Symantec (awful)
• McAfee
• AVG
• ESET
• Computer Associates (excellent)

I wouldn't bother with the speed tests, etc. shown at the AV review sites since most of these are in controlled environments, often with review-mode enabled. The impact will also vary depending on your network environment (workgroup or domain) and administrator-enforced policies.

Disclosure: I used to work on another now-obsolete anti-virus package back in the 90's.

I'd have to agree with the first answer.

I've seen such issues differ between jobs according to the verocity of the admins' intent to leave configs unchanged for devs. Correctly setup virus scanners still hinder dev, but at least it's bearable.

So I edit the scan lists to:

• Exclude all dev code directories
• Exclude Temporary ASP.Net gen'ed areas
• Exclude Resharper caches

I find this improves the disk thrashing that otherwise occurs with Visual Studio, Resharper and a Virus Scanner all hammering the drive. As always SysInternals' Filemon can help you target rogue services/processes.

We have Trend Micro antivirus at work, and it's terrible. It seems particularly bad doing checkouts.

We commissioned a new build machine recently, and the IS team hadn't set up exclusions for the build drives, and it was taking 45 minutes to check out source code from TFS. With the AV turned off, the exact same source code took about 1 minute 30 seconds to check out.

I also dont have maesurements, but some experiences:

• Dont use McAfee: We had serious performance problems (and other more serious ones) on a number of installations with that.

• Use Avira AntiVir: Reportedly the highest success rates, and no noticeable delay. I use it since years.

Would comment on answers from @MagnusJohannsson or @Rodrigo but don't have enough reputation. Just to agree really, and +1 for both.

I have NOD32 4.x on two very similar machines, 2nd Gen intel SSD's plenty of RAM, Duo / Quad Core's overclocked, clean installs of win 7, VS2010.

Have used NOD32 for years on many different boxes and many different builds without any problems, but had a horrible issue on one of the machines after a hardware upgrade and reinstall of OS where ekrn.exe (NOD's service) would go nuts and just eat up all the CPU leaving me having to physically shutdown the box.

After lots of to and fro with ESET support it was decided it was due to Visual Studio file access looking suspicious / being to quick, and in the end I excluded my project folders, and since then has been fine. Interestingly was project folder for a solution I was not using at the time, so maybe a TFS thing?

Anyhow this link is a simple guide for anyone having same problem with NOD32's ekrn.exe eating CPU

Excluding files or folders from real time scans

Having Fusion assembly binding logging enabled in combination with a virus scanner can result in performance problems during startup of an application. Either disable the Fusion logging or add the folder that it logs to as an exclusion in your virus scanner.