MsMpEng.exe excessive disk usage problem.

Question

I have a problem, when I start my computer the HD runs continuously to the point where nothing else can execute. This goes on for about 15 minutes and then everything is normal. Process Explorer seems to indicate that two apps (MsMpEng.exe and svchost.exe) are doing all the I/O. They both show about a half a gig of I/O. I use only MS Essentials, no other anti-malware on the system. I do use Secunia. I have a Dell Dimension 9100 with a couple of GB of memory running XP3 fully patched with auto-update turned on and the firewall turned on. I have done disk cleanup and defrag and a full MRT scan. I use the latest version of MS Essentials.  I can provide a screen shot of Process Explorer and complete system info. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Answer 1

MsMpEng is the Security Essentials AV engine, so it's not surprising that you'll see activity like this when you start yor PC. Also, svchost.exe is an essential part of Windows. It provides the interface between service programs and their dynamically-linked libraries. You can't stop it. Seeing a lot of svchost activity at startup is also normal. It may be possible to reduce the number of server host processes by not having as many services start automatically, but unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to determine which are necessary and which are not.