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What is the least slow Virus scanner to use with Microsoft Visual Studio

I have just had Microsoft Visual Studio “go slow” on me again due to my Virus Checker… (100s of Projects, some with over 100 C# files in them, so any thing that slows down builds is bad.)

We all know that development tools do a lot of file access so are badly effect by Virus Scanner. Most of us have to run a Virus scanner due to do many reasons.

So has anyone measured the effect of different virus scanners (and settings) on the speed of Microsoft Visual Studio?

Has anyone tied Microsoft Security Essentials with Visual Studio?

See also (if you have the rep, please extend the list)

What are peoples experiences with Visual Studio 2010 and virus checkers?

I got this as part of a helpful email from someone (that will rename nameless) at Microsoft speaking on his own behalf.

It’s not clear that we (Microsoft) would be able to endorse 3rd party products. With that in mind, I did notice that in the posting Ian linked to (this question) that Computer Associates was listed by someone as one of the best performing virus checkers for development environments, which interestingly enough is a product that I believe many Microsoft developers use on their desktops.

Since asking this question, I have had the least problems with Microsoft Security Essentials, however I have no facts or measurments to back this up.

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Ian Ringrose
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    +1 for being a question I've always wondered about and will find the answer to genuinely *very* useful! – Rob Aug 25 '09 at 11:01

11 Answers11

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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.

Magnus Johansson
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  • Key takeaway is to tell whatever virus scanner you have to ignore certain folders (such as `C:/TeamServerSource/` or wherever your projects are) – Don Cheadle Mar 09 '16 at 20:18
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Based on previous installations at various jobs, empirically rated from slowest (very annoying) to quickest (almost no impact):

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.

devstuff
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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.

penderi
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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.

Orion Edwards
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    That about sums up why it is not good to work in large companies with IS teams that don't care about programmers. – Ian Ringrose Aug 27 '09 at 08:26
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    In fairness, our IS team responded quickly and did the exclusions. They're all around pretty good :-) – Orion Edwards Sep 06 '09 at 23:16
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    Exact same experience (nov 2011) with Trend Micro "worry free security". It is horrible. Avoid at all cost. – Jan Willem B Nov 19 '10 at 18:18
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    What exclusions did you request? – BozoJoe Apr 04 '11 at 19:54
  • @BozoJoe - I wasn't the main one troubleshooting this, so I can't give you a proper list, but as far as I know the main problem was that whenever anyone checks anything out, TFS copies it to the temp directory on the server first, so excluding the temp directory from virus scan was the main thing that helped – Orion Edwards Apr 28 '11 at 20:20
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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.

RED SOFT ADAIR
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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.

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Scott Munro
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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

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MemeDeveloper
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You really need to weigh the capabilities and support of the antivirus program against the slowness. In my case, I've used several different ones, and the best choice was Avast. The Home edition is free, and they are one of the best about updating their virus definitions as new threats appear.

Eric
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Don't use Kaspersky(The old Tect Review one) it slows down normal explorer file opening for almost 10 second(Yes, you need to wait 10 second before opening each folder). And yes it affects Visual Studio. The new version does not seem the have the problem. NOD32 seem to not have this problem, and is a bit faster than Kaspersky(I don't even know if it's scan as much as Kaspersky does).

But for what ever reason, NOD32 firewall is bad!

Athiwat Chunlakhan
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Exclude your project folders and the visual studio app folder for realtime scan, and schedule a scan as often as you can feel safe.

Rodrigo
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Well to be honest, my work machine doesn't have a virus scanner installed, and for almost 2 years, I've never had a problem with viruses because I'm constantly behind corporate web patrol and other things keeps me pretty safe.

At home, though, I use NOD32, and on 3 different machines all using Visual Studio, I've never noticed any slowdowns. I apologize for not having any benchmarks to measure, just wanted to throw out my "answer."

Cᴏʀʏ
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