Antimalware Service Executable takes up half my memory, even with real-time protection off, what to do?

Question

Without any other applications running, the Antimalware Service Executable is taking up over 250MB of short-term memory, which combined with the minimal amount of background apps, takes >60% of short-term memory. This is without Chrome or anything else running in the foreground. I have tried disabling real-time protection, but that only drops the short-term memory use to >50%.

This has only been happening for a couple months now, but my computer is becoming unusable. What can I do?

Answer 1

Try download and install all updates for Windows.

Update Microsoft Defender and run a full scan with it.

Make sure report this issue using the Feedback Hub app.

Try performing Clean Boot and see if the problem persists?

Have a look at:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

If not, enable services one by one to see which one causing this issue.