Virex 7.5 and CPU overhead

[Welles Goodrich]

I downloaded and installed Virex 7.5 (.Mac user so it was 'free') and ran it just for the heck of it as I've never had a virus. It does seem faster. However this is a cautionary note, rather than a comprehensive review. Upon installation the default preferences include "Active Virus Detection" and "Automatically check for virus definition updates." I constantly keep an eye on CPU usage via a menu bar utility and wondered why it was up. The Activity Monitor showed a bunch of new listings which start with 'v' and sure enough one of them was taking from 4-6% CPU usage. Unchecking those two Virex preferences dropped the usage back to normal.

[Craig R. Arko]

I noticed that too, only it was more like 11% on my poor old G3/350 B&W. Turning off those prefs did indeed do the trick. I'm happy enough to scan things manually I guess.

[Welles Goodrich]

I'm happy enough to scan things manually I guess.

Me too! I view Virex as elephant insurance. (You don't see any elephants around here, do you? See... it works!) :rolleyes:

[Craig R. Arko]

There is some discussion on the MacFixIt front page which implies there are other issues (some serious, like eating mailboxes) with Virex 7.5 that turning off the automatic stuff is a wise decision.

For those of you who have not updated yet, it might be prudent to wait a while yet and see how this shakes out. For those who have updated, you might want to turn things off in the preferences for a while.

[Welles Goodrich]

There is some discussion on the MacFixIt front page which implies there are other issues (some serious, like eating mailboxes) with Virex 7.5 that turning off the automatic stuff is a wise decision.

For those of you who have not updated yet, it might be prudent to wait a while yet and see how this shakes out. For those who have updated, you might want to turn things off in the preferences for a while.

That's good advice. Upon restart, after installing Virex 7.5, all of my system wide Menu extras activated in preference panes were turned off (Sound, Monitors, Energy Saver, iAddress X, Input Menu) as were several others which were just Menu extras (Eject button, Cee Pee U,SoundSource, WinSwitch). Applications which add menu extras but open in the Startup menu were there. It was an annoyance but no more, although a couple of items had to be reinstalled.

[bramley]

Phew!

I was about to click on the package when I decided to read this forum first!

Did a little research. The beta versions of this app torpedoed mailboxes because they detected viruses in them, but didn't do any surgery on the mbox format (where messages in local mailboxes are all in one indexed file) and threw away the whole message file. Hence the problems with mail.app, but presumeably Eudora is OK? Now, according to the readme, viruses in such files will still be detected but not erased. Which saves the mailbox. You must use 'manual delete only,' whose meaning isn't clear to me. Presumeably, this will either trash the whole file as before, do surgery, or wait for you to find the email and delete it.

Although there are complaints about 7.5 not actually seeing viruses, there are many more about how effective it is at spotting Windows viruses. Makes me wonder if other reported problems with Eudora for example are really the result of large amounts of stored mail, not previously inspected, being cleansed. Which suggests that 7.2 wasn't spotting it.

Also there are claimed to be problems with mounted local volumes i.e iPods, cameras, and similar. Including HotSync and Palm Desktop problems.

Certainly needs more work before it goes live on my machine. FYI, for those who would like to uninstall 7.5, the disc image from .Mac includes an uninstaller.

[yellow]

Which suggests that 7.2 wasn't spotting it.

It doesn't. It also doesn't do a very good job of scanning. Case in point, I have a user that is switching to Windows (be careful what you ask for, you might get it!), he has upwards of 30,000 documents. He had over 8,000 email attachments in an attachments directory, of which there were quite a few (about 1000) Windows viruses (.pif, .scr, etc). If I set Virex 7.2.1 on that directory and told it to scan, it would never actually make it to scanning all 8000+ attachments. It would sometimes scan 5,000, sometimes 2,000, etc. Sometimes it would find and remove viruses, sometimes it wouldn't. It never found more then 25 viruses at a time. I would run it repeatedly and I finally had to jsut clear out all the files that I knew to be viruses by hand.
Very unreliable.

[bramley]

So that's why it's a free download from .Mac then .... :)

[Cat2Mac]

I too had issues with the "noise" and excess CPU time after I installed Virex 7.5. I was able to tame Virex using the following:

1. Turn OFF automatic eUpdate (eliminates the "weird noise"). Use either manual or scheduled eUpdate.

2. REBOOT immediately after install (recommended by MacAfee) & any time you turn entire tasks (Active/Background/Mount scanning) on/off.

3. Make sure you uninstall the previous AV software using the specific tool supplied by Symantec/MacAfee for your AV software. (Look on thier websites).

4. To avoid unwanted deletions set Clean Macros OFF, & "when a virus is found" to NOTIFY.

I have tested this on the following systems:

-- G5 PowerMac 2x2.0GHz 2.5GB ram OSX 10.3.5 Norton AV 9.0.2
-- G4 Powerbook 867MHz 512MB ram OSX 10.3.5 Virex 7.2.1

Once you've turned OFF automatic eUpdate (apparently the "bad boy"), the Active/Background/Mount scanners seem to behave normally (<1%CPU) when turned on. (or off .... your choice.)

UPDATE: After running a few additional experiments, I now believe that Virex IS IGNORING its preferences after reboot. Furthermore, it seems it wasn't my turning eUpdate off that worked ... it was actually OPENING the GUI:

-- After reboot I observed most of the VS* tasks using 2, 4, even over 10%. Including tasks I had turned off. (Apparently ignoring the Virex preference settings.)

-- I opened the GUI & ALL VS* tasks dropped to <0.5%, & inactive ones stayed @ 0.00.

All processes seem to behave after quitting the GUI (I do see some hung processes, but scanning is working). Starting the Virex GUI seems to load the correct prefferences.

I hope the helps...

[Cat2Mac]

Following a suggestion posted on another form, I downloaded OnyX 1.4.6 ( freeware - http://www.titanium.free.fr/english.html). I then performed the "Maintain" & "Cleaning" functions. After reboot, Virex 7.5 seems to be running smoothly.

To repeat the suggestions of several posters: Fix permissions before & after a major install. Also, use Disk Utility, OnyX, and/or other maintenence tools to keep your system clean & functioning.

(P.S. I'm leaving Background & Active scans OFF. I am also leaving automatic eUpdate OFF)

Stan Lubiak