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Solved Windows Defender idle processes are heating unit, making fan blow all the time, and draining battery

Zog1971

Active Member
So, I am just figuring out an issue that I've been experiencing today and I think this may be affecting others.

I happened to be sitting right next to my SP3 8gb Ram, 256, i7 and working at me desktop. The SP3 had no programs running at all and had just booted up from being shut off for a few hours so was nice and cool. It sat for about 10 minutes and all of the sudden I noticed the fan come on. I felt the unit and it was very warm. I opened up my task manager and CPU was at 1% and under 1ghz. After a few minutes the unit cooled and the fan turned off. Weird.

I decided to leave the task manager up full screen to monitor cpu usage and processes. After several minutes, I noticed the CPU usage jumping to 30-35% and and 2.8-3.1ghz. As soon as I would engage the device in anyway (the touchscreen, touchpad, keyboard) the processes would go back to 1%, the unit would cool and fan would go off within a few minutes. This is now happening every time the system sits idle for more that 5-10 minutes. I finally (and it was kinda difficult since it would stop once you move the cursor) found the process that is causing this is Antimalware Service Executable which is part of Windows Defender, the only anti-virus I have running on the system. Interesting to note, I have had the SP3 for over a week without this issue whatsoever, but did manually run a quick virus scan in the SP3 today for the first time. This was the first time Defender had run the scan. In doing more tests, I let it go ahead and run for over 45 minutes without touching the screen hoping that it was maybe just a process that needs to run once for Defender or something. I touched the screen at 45 mins to make it stop, but thinking this would just run until it exits idle status.

Anyway, I bet this affecting more people than just me and I bet it can contribute to some peoples heat/excessive fan running issues as well as battery issues. I had my unit plugged in, but bet the batter will drain quick with the fan constantly on turbo.

Any ideas besides turning off Windows Defender for making this stop? The unit just started doing it again.....
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
So what happens if you open the defender console and do a manual scan? does still it activate when idle?
 

leeshor

Well-Known Member
Questions. Are you using any other anti virus programs? Have you done a disk check? A corruption on the internal storage will cause Defender to hang and any other AV software will conflict.
 
OP
Zog1971

Zog1971

Active Member
So what happens if you open the defender console and do a manual scan? does still it activate when idle?
Yes. It just started after I ran the first scan. I have opened it up several times today and did a quick scan and full scan, however after the computer sits idle for a while, it takes up 35% cpu and keeps processor around 3.0ghz. If I do nothing, it runs indefinitely. As soon as do anything, the processes all go back to normal. But after sitting idle, it starts back up. I just tested and confirmed this is even with real time protection turned off. Just turned the whole program off to see if that makes it stop.
 
OP
Zog1971

Zog1971

Active Member
Questions. Are you using any other anti virus programs? Have you done a disk check? A corruption on the internal storage will cause Defender to hang and any other AV software will conflict.
No other AV software and disk looks good. The manual scans, both full and quick, all run fine.
 
OP
Zog1971

Zog1971

Active Member
Since it was still happening even having realtime protection turned off, I turned off Windows Defender all together and that has stopped the issue. Now I'm left without AV protection. :( I have been perfectly happy with Windows defender on my SP1. Any bright ideas what might be causing this as I would like to continue to use Defender.
 
OP
Zog1971

Zog1971

Active Member
Well, after researching free antivirus, I decided to go with Bitdefender and really like it and what I've read. I needed to get better AV protection than Windows Defender anyway, from things I've read, so guess this just pushed me in that direction. SP3 remained cool during the installation and scans of Bitdefender and CPU idle processes are staying normal. Not sure why WD was freaking things out, but onward and upward!
 
OP
Zog1971

Zog1971

Active Member
Curious if anyone else noticed this? I am still working great since turning off Windows Defender and installing another AV software. System is now completely quiet and cool when idle, once again. Has anyone else noticed WD taxing the system like I was? Really strange if it was just me.
 
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