High Memory Usage - a Firewall / Antivirus issue?

[klem]

Originally Posted by mazex

If you have a stateful hardware firewall in your router (most people have) I see no reason to use more than the built in firewall in Windows 7. Regarding all third party tools like membooster etc I would never use them myself as a long time IT professional. IMO the operative system should be left alone taking care of the memory (that's one of the main purposes of an OS ), and if applications are written as they should, they should take care of their own memory allocation/de-allocation... A third party tool will only mess things up... I never use any such tools and I never have any problems with crashes etc in Windows 7 that are not related to poorly written third party code. The last 10 years I have only been running non intrusive firewalls live AVG, Avast and lately Microsoft Internet Security (free download from Microsoft that is completely adequate if you don't mindlessly download crap from Piratebay etc). Last time I had to re-install my system due to spyware/viruses was in the 90:ies. Occasionally I scan my system with Spybot or Ad-Aware but it really should not be necessary (and I never install their "automatic" background services etc). Make sure you know what all running processes do and minimize applications that are initialized at startup by default and your system should have the best possibilities to work as it's supposed to do...

Then of course there are applications with memory leaks like CloD in multiplayer, but a memory leak is a problem that membooster will not be able to handle anyway... I don't know any IT-professional that uses stuff like that - and absolutely no reg-cleaners etc that will only cause problems. Make sure you don't need them by not messing your system up in the first place instead

So... summary of my advice as a development manager in a high security company... Run a system that is as "lean and mean" as possible with a bare minimum of stuff running that are is not necessary. Regularly check which processes that run on your system with either taskmanager or a better tool like the free tool "Process Explorer" from Microsoft. Do some research on processes you cannot identify and get rid of them if they are not needed. Use the least intrusive antivirus you can find that gets a good scoring at sites like http://www.av-comparatives.org, and then make sure to use common sense and you will not get viruses or other problems.

Good luck! /Mazex

Hi MAzex, many thanks for that clear explanation

I suppose I use a third party antivirus/firewall because for many years Windows Security systems, along with IE, had a reputation for being 'weak' and full of back-door loopholes that could easily be exploited. Unfortunately I haven't found anything to say that has changed although you clearly have faith in MS security so I will give it a try.

My Router is D-Link DIR-655 and Stateful Packet Inspection is enabled.

I take your point about Membooster and realise that the memory leak won't be fixed by it. I have been using it as a 'high memory usage' warning (its audio) but I'm in the habit now of restarting CoD between sorties so I can probably live without that. It only warns me, it doesn't prevent a crash.

I used AVG before Commodo but they introduced an element that was intrusive (can't remember what) and it couldn't be turned off even in Task Manager. Actually I've discovered that I have had both Microsoft Security Essentials and Commodo A/Virus running at the same time (I thought I had turned MS off) although, in Control Panel, Windows Firewall was off (now turned on) so I am going to uninstall Commodo and see how that goes. I assume Microsoft Security Essentials is what you meant by "Microsoft Internet Security" and that it gives me everything I need. Automatic updates is set to 'check and advise'. I looked at that comparatives website you pointed me too. I wonder why MS can't achieve ADV+ status.

There are of course a huge number of processes running which I'll try to look up but frankly I don't know what most of the system/MS processes are but some of hte others should be recognisable.

Thanks again for the info, lets see how it goes.

EDIT: By the way I was looking at something called Gamebooster which does shut down a lot of Processes before launching the game. Do you know of that?
It also suggests the following Tweaks:
Diable 8.3 names for NTFS and speed up disk access
Disable last Access for NTFS and speed up disk access
End Hung Applications faster (basically halves the timeout values)
Make system shutdown faster (Reduce WaitToKillServiceTimeout from 12000 to 5000)
Increase IE download sessions (from N/A to 10)

Any thoughts on those?

[mazex]

Originally Posted by klem

Hi MAzex, many thanks for that clear explanation

I suppose I use a third party antivirus/firewall because for many years Windows Security systems, along with IE, had a reputation for being 'weak' and full of back-door loopholes that could easily be exploited. Unfortunately I haven't found anything to say that has changed although you clearly have faith in MS security so I will give it a try.

My Router is D-Link DIR-655 and Stateful Packet Inspection is enabled.

I take your point about Membooster and realise that the memory leak won't be fixed by it. I have been using it as a 'high memory usage' warning (its audio) but I'm in the habit now of restarting CoD between sorties so I can probably live without that. It only warns me, it doesn't prevent a crash.

I used AVG before Commodo but they introduced an element that was intrusive (can't remember what) and it couldn't be turned off even in Task Manager. Actually I've discovered that I have had both Microsoft Security Essentials and Commodo A/Virus running at the same time (I thought I had turned MS off) although, in Control Panel, Windows Firewall was off (now turned on) so I am going to uninstall Commodo and see how that goes. I assume Microsoft Security Essentials is what you meant by "Microsoft Internet Security" and that it gives me everything I need. Automatic updates is set to 'check and advise'. I looked at that comparatives website you pointed me too. I wonder why MS can't achieve ADV+ status.

There are of course a huge number of processes running which I'll try to look up but frankly I don't know what most of the system/MS processes are but some of hte others should be recognisable.

Thanks again for the info, lets see how it goes.

EDIT: By the way I was looking at something called Gamebooster which does shut down a lot of Processes before launching the game. Do you know of that?
It also suggests the following Tweaks:
Diable 8.3 names for NTFS and speed up disk access
Disable last Access for NTFS and speed up disk access
End Hung Applications faster (basically halves the timeout values)
Make system shutdown faster (Reduce WaitToKillServiceTimeout from 12000 to 5000)
Increase IE download sessions (from N/A to 10)

Any thoughts on those?

Sorry for the confusion caused by giving "Microsoft Security Essentials" (lets call it MSE from here) a new name, it's such a generic nonsense name and I have just used it for 6 months for the same reason you describe above - I didn't trust it as it had a crap reputation at first . Just like you say it was not something to write home about when it was first released a few years ago but now it has grown to be a rather decent product the last year and if you don't want all the other stuff that the commercial packages push on your system it does what it's supposed to do good enough if you are not a high risk user... It does antivirus and antispyware and nothing more which is what I want! Look at some recent reviews of it and you will see that it's up there competing with the commercial products in most tests, even though it may not win the the "best in show" awards as it has no "bling features". Regarding anti virus comparisons it's always an ongoing battle where one product wins one category in one test and then a few months later it may end up mid field... The thing that I like with MSE is that it needs almost zero interaction and it has a good result in "false positives" that can be rather annoying...

I regularly meet sequrity consultants as we do regular penetration tests and security training courses for our developers and just for fun I use to ask them which personal anti virus software they prefer and they all have different favorites... My favorite hacker consultant likes Nod32 and his collegue goes for Kaspersky. They both think that MSE really should be enough for most users that don't expose themselves to risks, but at a company you have all kinds of idiots so it's not recommended there The main thing is really your own behavior to minimize the risk as no anti virus suite will be 100% reliable. I am a low risk group as I don't download any pirated stuff or install random applications from the net without researching them first. And it's a sound behavior and mindset that is the best guard against unwanted guests in your computer

Regarding the advice regarding NTFS tuning etc I'm pretty sure will give you minimal performance gains, and like I said - let the OS do it's work and don't fix it if it ain't broken. Applications that mess around in the registry changing stuff that maybe don't work in the same way in all service pack levels of the OS etc will just cause problems in the end... So, leave the OS and registry alone unless needed (in some cases you really have to mess around with it to achieve specific stuff after running into a problem, but that should be rare for normal users).

If you chase performance... A hint to use at your own risk that will reduce the impact of the AV software is to disable the real time scanning of files that are already on the computer and only scan incoming files. If you are a low risk user that really should work fine. In MSE you go to the setting group called "realtime protection" and set the "Monitor file and program activity on your computer" to the setting "Monitor only incoming files".... That will give a boost to games etc as the files that have already been checked will not be scanned in realtime.

And for checking what a process does, try Process Explorer - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653. It has a nifty short cut if you right click on a process and select "Search online". Just a shortcut that starts a web search for that process executable, but I like it as it makes it faster It also has an abundance of columns to add to the overview that are really nice And the process details are really nice if you check a single process.

/Mazex