Microsoft Security Essentials & MsMpEng.exe hogging resources

I've been using MSE for a couple months now, never had a single problem. All of a sudden the process "MsMpEng.exe" will randomly go crazy and hog all my system resources so I can't do anything unless I kill it in the task manager. (I've quit the program for now and my comp is running smooth). When I restart the program, reboot, whatever, it goes off and hogs all the resources again after a couple minutes. If I kill the process it will go away and then come back a couple minutes later and do the same thing. I've scanned with MSE, another antivirus and malware with no probs. Any ideas? Should I uninstall and find something else? The thing is I've liked it so far. I'm running Win7 64-bit.

Also, I'm not running any other conflicting security programs. This is the only one on my PC right now. Windows Defender is also off.

Solution 1:

You can adjust the amount of resources MSE uses. The following settings can decrease the resources usage without greatly effecting the effectiveness of MSE.

• look at the settings tab>"scheduled scan" settings in MSE you should see the option to limit the cpu usage from 10-100%.
• look at the "real time protection" settings and see what effect unchecking "enable network inspection system" and "enable behavior monitoring"
• look in the "advanced" settings and see if "scan archive files" or "scan removable drives" are enabled.
• verify your install is fully updated