Slow down when editing large files with Real-Time Protection Software

Slow down when editing large files with Real-Time Protection Software

6
NewbieNewbie
6

    May 20, 2010#1

    I have two computers using Microsoft Security Essentials. One is a power 8-core computer with a 15k RPM hard drive and it does not see slow downs, so this observation is purely based on how up-to-date your computer is and took me a few days to figure out what was happening.

    So, if you have a slow computer that hasn't been updated in years, and you have Microsoft Security Essentials (and possibly other Real-Time Protection virus software) installed, this most likely applies to you.

    With no exceptions added for UE, since UE saves unsaved documents (documents in edit mode) to your hard drive in a temp directory, which I believe is in the AppData folder (in Vista/7) or Application Settings folder on XP, everytime you update the file, add/remove a character, the active protection will engage and scan the file to make sure it's safe before it lets UE continue. So, as you can assume, if you are a fast typer, this will cause your productivity to greatly decrease.

    I have tried this on a variety of size files, and it seems to only happen on large files with >1000 lines of decently large width text, but the slow down, I believe, is proportional with how many lines you have.

    In order to remedy this problem, you have to add an Exception to your real-time protection program and tell it to exclude UE's temp folder directory, which is: (this is for an XP user) C:\Documents and Settings\[Your Name Here]\Application Data\IDMComp\UltraEdit

    Hope this helps anyone else who is encountering this issue.
    2362
    MasterMaster
    2362

      May 20, 2010#2

      I've heard others complain about the new UE versions being slow. I wonder if this might be the issue with some of that.
      “Don’t document the problem, fix it.” – Atli Björgvin Oddsson
      6
      NewbieNewbie
      6

        May 21, 2010#3

        It might be IF they have real-time protection enabled. I'm not sure if there is another way to get around this or not with real-time enabled. I would assume IDM is keeping the file stream opened and locked while we are editing something, so if that's the case, then I don't know if there is much else they can do about it.
        6,687587
        Grand MasterGrand Master
        6,687587

          May 23, 2010#4

          UltraEdit uses by default the directory defined by Windows environment variable TEMP (temp directory of the user) as directory for the temporary files as most other applications also do. Opening this folder can be most easily done by copying %temp% into the address bar of Windows Explorer and hit key RETURN. After starting a Windows computer this directory should be empty as well as %systemroot%\Temp (the system temp directory). It is safe to delete all files and folders in these 2 directories after starting Windows. Some temporary files are perhaps currently in use and therefore can't be deleted, but all others can be deleted. The Windows system tool named CleanUp (Accessories - System Tools) makes this job, too.

          However, to exclude the entire temp directory for being watched by the anti-virus software is not advisable for those who use such a software in real time mode because of not knowing how to deal with the threats in WWW. Downloaded packed applications are unpacked into this directory or a temporary created subdirectory and started from there and therefore excluding this directory for temporary files is in general no good idea.

          A solution for UltraEdit is to use the special INI setting

          [Settings]
          Temp File Dir=Full path to the temp directory for UltraEdit

          added manually to uedit32.ini and exclude that directory for the protection software. This special temp directory for UE could be just a subdirectory in %temp% and just this subdirectory is excluded for being observed by the protection software. Double quotes around the directory name are now allowed even when path contains one or more space characters. The path must be an absolute path. Environment variables like %temp% inside the path are not possible.


          %appdata%\IDMComp\UltraEdit is not a directory for temporary files. It is the directory used by UltraEdit according to Windows standard as defined by Microsoft to store the users configuration for UltraEdit. Most of the files there are text files containing your settings for UltraEdit. Why the integrated AVG software of Windows 7 scans all that text files permanently on every access is something which must be asked Microsoft. But it is already known that this can result in a poor performance on startup, see Windows 7 (Beta/RC) issues with UltraEdit. I don't have Windows 7 and therefore don't know if the problems reported there for UE v14.20 and v15.00 with Windows 7 Beta and RC are still of importance or not.
          Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
          6
          NewbieNewbie
          6

            Jun 03, 2010#5

            Well, that may be the case, but excluding the application data folder that UE uses does eliminate this problem in XP, Vista and 7 as I have computers running UE in all of them and have tested the scenario on them all as well.

            As for why this works, I'm not sure since I don't know much about how the software is developed. This may be a fix on mine simply because I use the FTP in-place editing (and this is the only test I have performed), so it may still happen with someone else who edits files directly on there computer.

            This may pose as a security risk, but I don't think it is a very big one unless UE itself is compromised.

            I would never advise to take the temp directory out of the AV's scope of search.