ekern.exe CPU Spiking on Program Load

I have read all about spiking issues with settings like unwanted programs or Adv. Huer.

I have a problem that seems to be a little different. ekern.exe is spiking CPU usage, usually anywhere from 20%-50% when opening and using an .exe file on a network share. All network scanning is disabled and there is no activity in the activity monitor when opening the program. The application is accounting software and there is also high CPU usage while running reports and just generally moving through menus. It uses no local files, everything is accessed over a network share. I don't understand why ekern.exe should be doing anything with network files when network is unchecked in real-time scanning options. I have also disabled all scanning period and it's still spiking CPU and slowing the program down. I originally had 4.437 installed and recently updated to 4.474. That actually fixed the problem for a couple of weeks but now it's back.

Any ideas?

 

Do you use default settings for advanced heuristics? Couldn't it be that the application creates or copies files to the local drive? Try watching the statistics window where you should see what files are actually accessed/scanned.

 

I have looked at the statistics. That's what I meant when I wrote activity monitor. I'll watch that along with task manager and I can see ekern.exe running at 20% but there is no activity as far as files scanned. There is literally no change in the number of scanned files yet ekern.exe still is using a ton of CPU %.

 

I was trying different settings changes but not rebooting. I disabled most everything I could think of like adv. huer., unwanted prog. and self defense and then rebooted. That seemed to take care of the problem. I'm going to go back and re-enable one at a time to see if I can find what's causing the CPU spike. I didn't realize some settings don't take effect until a reboot.

 

No real-time protection settings require a reboot to take effect.