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Virtual memory usage excessive when scanning Vipre install file
When updating Vipre 3.1.2243 to 3125 I was surprised to see a serious system slowdown while the updated installer was downloaded. System became unresponsive, requiring a forced (power button) shutdown.
Installed the update, rebooted, and then selected the update package again (clicked on vipre.exe file on the Windows desktop), while using SysInternals Process Explorer to monitor the SBAMSvc.exe process. Physical memory stays in a reasonable range, but virtual memory usage exploded, again resulting in a unresponsive system, along with "Virtual memory too low errors". Disk usage is very high at this point, which I assume is due to paging.
I grabbed the screen shot below, then right clicked on the Vipre icon to shut it down. Took approximately 5 minutes before the popup menu appeared with the shutdown option.
This is on a Win XP SP2 laptop, with a 1.5GHz Celeron M, and 512MB of RAM.
Installed the update, rebooted, and then selected the update package again (clicked on vipre.exe file on the Windows desktop), while using SysInternals Process Explorer to monitor the SBAMSvc.exe process. Physical memory stays in a reasonable range, but virtual memory usage exploded, again resulting in a unresponsive system, along with "Virtual memory too low errors". Disk usage is very high at this point, which I assume is due to paging.
I grabbed the screen shot below, then right clicked on the Vipre icon to shut it down. Took approximately 5 minutes before the popup menu appeared with the shutdown option.
This is on a Win XP SP2 laptop, with a 1.5GHz Celeron M, and 512MB of RAM.
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Inappropriate?Thank you for posting,
If you disable VIPREs Active Protection do you receive the same system lock up when running the installer package?
Regards,
Jason Layman -
Inappropriate?Yes, but that defeats the purpose of using VIPRE. -
Inappropriate?Hi Mksql,
What other security programs are installed on the computer? are any of their real time protections running? -
Inappropriate?No other security software, no AV, no firewall other than the one supplied with Win XP.
Watching other processes shows only the SBAMsvc process running outside of expected ranges. -
Inappropriate?Thanks for advising. Could you please contact us here in support at support@sunbelt-software.com
One of the techs can gather some log information from you and we can see why it's using so much memory.1 Comment
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I sent the information and logs to support on September 4, but have not received a ticket number. An issue sent to support this week has already been addressed. Can you verify that the information have been received? -
Inappropriate?I will attempt on a different PC (the one in question has had VIPRE removed so the user could work). If successful, I will send the diag logs to the support email address.
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Inappropriate?Thank you.
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Inappropriate?Unfortunately I cannot use the same PC, as it is one that is in active use, and I cannot commit it as a test machine. However, on the same PC where logs were submitted for case 001-00-239297, I see a similar behavior with one significant difference.
On PCs with at least 1GB of RAM, scanning the 3.1.3125 Vipre installer pushes VM usage over 512MB at several points in time, and while performance is impacted, it is not as serious as the 512MB RAM PC which must do much more paging to disk. At 512MB of RAM the PC is crippled - with 1GB performance is poor during the scan, but the system is still usable.
I will make a point about memory usage here. Another product that advertises "low resource usage" takes up more physical RAM on the same PC (an average of 35 MB vs the 15 MB for Vipre). But this product typically does not change it's memory usage much - it is more consistent. The current problem with Vipre's active protection is that at various points, memory usage temporarily balloons, causing serious slowdowns. Based on my observations, paging of VM to disk is the performance killer here. -
Inappropriate?I was able to get temporary access again to the machine used in the above screen shot. VIPRE diagnostic logs sent to support e-mail.
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Inappropriate?From time to time I have even worse problem with memory consumption... How can I assist to find the problem when it appears again? -
Inappropriate?Image for previous...
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Inappropriate?Hi Mksql,
I have been trying to locate your ticket and logs, I haven't been able to locate them. our support tickets are searchible by the customers last name or email address.
Can you please email me your name and email address at support@sunbelt-software.com and put attention Mike in the subject line
I'll locate the ticket and see what is happening with it. -
Inappropriate?Shortly after posting today's query, I received ticket #001-00-239297, with some test information. Thanks!
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Inappropriate?Thank you. I see the ticket is assigned to one of my lead techs. Reading back through all the information, I'm not sure if we will be able to come up with a quick fix on this. Scans can be intrusive, this is why we schedule them for the middle of the night.
when you scan the computer, depending on the type of scan, either the files from the hard drive or the full definition set is loaded into memory. When a computer has limited memory the Virtual memory needs to be used. If you have other programs running the situation can only get worse.
We are implementing a newer type of signature based definitions that will dramatically reduce the size of the file, this may help on this machine when running a quick scan.
I'm going to have the tech keep me up to date with your ticket, hopefully we can come with some kind of work around.2 Comments Add a comment
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I will be performing a new test tonight, with the suggestions made in the support ticket. Keep in mind however that this issue was not reported on a full or quick system scan, but upon right-clicking a file on the user desktop. I would not be overly concerned if resource usage was high during a full system scan, as I typically perform those when the machine is not in active use. But if the AP scanner grabs too many resources during a common user operation, then the "low impact" claims made for VIPRE do not hold true.
An example of a "common user operation" in this example case is: Download VIPRE installer to desktop; Install VIPRE; Reboot; Configure VIPRE with AP; Right-click vipre.exe installer to delete. Upon this last step is when the system becomes unresponsive. -
I'm sorry, I just saw you comment. When you right click on a file and choose scan, the scan engine looks at the file not the active protection, but either way I understand your concerns about the computer locking up. I don't want to jump right in and say that it's the computers limited memory, scanning a single file shouldn't so intrusive that it locks up.
I'll keep an eye on your support ticket. Thank you again for your patience. -
Inappropriate?The details are in the ticket (updated last night), but for the benefit of others reading the thread, I am _not_ selecting Scan from the right-click menu. The activity in SBAMsvc.exe occurs immediately after the right-click. I do not have to do anything futher, other than the click, to reproduce the problem.1 Comment Add a comment
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Oh, I thought you were saying it happened after you clicked scan. Thank you for clearing that up.
