Antimalware Service Executable process very very high network usage

[Scruffy90]

I know people have had issues with the Antimalware Service Executable process causing high cpu usage or disk usage, but it is causing insanely high network usage for me.

What is being sent or received from Microsoft that it is using 500-700 mbps for prolonged periods of time? So far its been about 20 minutes.

 

Anyway to get this to drop or stop entirely?
 

[Eigenvektor]

I would check on the router to see if it is indeed traffic going out to the internet. Is >500 Mbps up/down even possible with your internet connection?

 

Do you have any type of network storage attached? It might be "downloading" files to scan them.

[Vishera]

5 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

I know people have had issues with the Antimalware Service Executable process causing high cpu usage or disk usage, but it is causing insanely high network usage for me.

What is being sent or received from Microsoft that it is using 500-700 mbps for prolonged periods of time? So far its been about 20 minutes.

 

Anyway to get this to drop or stop entirely?
 

That's a service of Windows Defender,

To be more precise it's the real time anti-virus protection component,probably communicates with the "cloud" too.

 

You will have to disable the real time anti-virus protection,it's also possible that you will have to disable Windows defender completely.

You can find guides here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+disable+windows+defender+in+windows+10

[Kilrah]

You likely have a NAS and Windows Defender is scanning files on it for viruses.

[Scruffy90]

7 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

I would check on the router to see if it is indeed traffic going out to the internet. Is >500 Mbps up/down even possible with your internet connection?

 

Do you have any type of network storage attached? It might be "downloading" files to scan them.

I'd have to check what is being sent through my router. 
And yes, I top out around 1-1.1gbps up/down

I do have a nas, and thought that is what may have been getting scanned, but all shares that are connected to windows are excluded from windows defender, which is why I initially found it strange. 

 

7 hours ago, Vishera said:

That's a service of Windows Defender,

To be more precise it's the real time anti-virus protection component,probably communicates with the "cloud" too.

 

You will have to disable the real time anti-virus protection,it's also possible that you will have to disable Windows defender completely.

You can find guides here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+disable+windows+defender+in+windows+10

I'll have to check this out. Thanks!

 

6 hours ago, Kilrah said:

You likely have a NAS and Windows Defender is scanning files on it for viruses.

This is what I thought, but the NAS shares are on the exclusion list for defender

[Kilrah]

36 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

This is what I thought, but the NAS shares are on the exclusion list for defender

Don't know if it's still the case, but I remember at some point excluding a folder excluded the files in that folder, but not any subfolders.

[Scruffy90]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Don't know if it's still the case, but I remember at some point excluding a folder excluded the files in that folder, but not any subfolders.

That would be really annoying, which is why I excluded the entire share. I hope that isn't the case haha