Is there a happy medium with AMON?

After reading through some of the forums posts on iTunes slowdown problems I learned that AMON is scanning anything and everything...all the time, as it should. When I play an MP3 file it seems to scan the file twice in the beginning of the song. I tested this by playing a song a watching task manager CPU usage. It seems to spike to around 100% then it goes down to around 2-4% and then it jumps to around 100% again. After this it just stays steady at around 2-4% until the next song starts up. What I learned is that I can add folders and files into the exception section in AMON. My question is, is there a happy medium with AMON when it comes to things like this? How does everyone else treat AMON?...what do you add to you exception, if anything.

I also seemed to have problems when I tried to run Vista Ultimate on my machine. My HDD would always be running and now I'm wondering if AMON had something to do with that.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

Hi . First for the mp3 music file . AMON cannot scan this mp3 files twice if it remains unchanged (as it should be) because by default AMON uses "Optimised scanning" which is option not to scan unchanged files more than once . Optimised scanning is in Control Center->AMON->Setup->"Options" tab

I use AMON with no exceptions but you can add one if you need to.

 

Does excluding the mp3 extension from scanning in the AMON setup make a difference? I'm doubtful about that as mp3 is not a PE format so NOD32 shouldn't analyse it in detail.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I just checked it both ways. When it is set to default it seems to scan the .mp3 file and it scans the itunes library and one or two other .xml and .itl files. This is when the CPU spikes to around 100%. When you play the next song it does the same thing. It's not spiking twice anymore (like I mentioned in my initial post) but it is spiking. When I add all of my music folders to the exceptions section everything calms down. At the most I seeing spikes between 12-22% but that is it. The other weird thing I noticed is that this is worse on my .mp3 files. When I play back music purchased from the itunes store or that I have in AAC it doesn't seem to affect the CPU.

The other piece that I notice is my HDD churning when I downloading podcasts or music from itunes but I think that is IMON.

 

Can you try the following then :

1) Download a fresh copy of NOD32 v 2.7 for your correct operating system
Trial version
Full paid version

2) Goto Control Panel-> Add/Remove programs and Uninstall NOD32

3) Reboot

4) Goto C:\Program files and manually delete the folder ESET

5) Repair Winsock
Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista

Goto Start –> Run
type cmd and click OK.
Type netsh winsock reset
Press ENTER . Restart immediately !

Note that there is a space between the commands , example netshSPACEwinsockSPACEreset

6) Run Windows Disk Clean-up to remove any unnecessary temporary files that might conflict with your NOD32
Goto Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Clean , check all the things and confirm with OK
http://pandaman.my.contact.bg/dcu.PNG


7) Install NOD32 from the file you just downloaded in step 1
Use Typical settings . Reboot when prompted to do so.

8 ) Make sure you have stable i-net connection and NOD32 (nod32krn.exe) is allowed to go through your firewall and Update NOD

9) Open AMON -> Setup :
In "Detections" tab
Click "Extensions" button
Uncheck "Scan all files" so that you'll see the following and confirm with OK:

http://pandaman.my.contact.bg/amonextedit111.PNG

This way AMON will scan only the most importat files that might infect you and will prevent possible conflicts so that you don't need to add things in the exclusions list or have issues.

In "Options" tab , make sure everything looks like that:
http://pandaman.my.contact.bg/030.gif

Confirm with OK . Report back what happened

 

Thanks, I'll try that and report back. I've read in other post that turning off "scan all files" isn't the best option. What am I giving up in security using these settings?

 

Almost nothing because these extensions are the most common . They can be infected . Very very rarely can you find something else (file with other extension infected) . If there is , ESET will update the extensions . You yourself can always add an extension if you want to or need to .

Moreover , other components such as IMON or the on-demand scanner scan ALL kind of files/extensions so that they will pick up threats .

I think this will not be a problem so do it safely

 

Thanks, everything seems fine. I listened to a bunch of .mp3 files and there is minor spike to about 8-10% but I think that is just iTunes. Thanks again for all your help. I performs scans once a week so I'm assuming everything will be fine.

I have a question around "scan all files". Has that feature always been there? I think back to earlier versions of NOD32 and I don't remember any noticeable system impact. Is this a fairly new option? Maybe I just need to upgrade my machine

 

You are welcome ! Thanks for letting us know

 

From memory this was implemented in version 2.5 as the default setting.

Cheers

 

How about Derek Acorah if he uses Nod32

 

The only change for AMON from default I ever set...is "clean automatically" instead of the default "prohibit/prompt" ...under the Action tab.

Never experienced performance problems in this way....across various hardware.

One note about your Vista rig....what are the hardware specs? Constant hard drive activity..might be light on RAM? The sweet spot for Vista is 2 gigs of RAM for the average user...the equivalent of 512 megs of RAM for XP which was the sweet spot for the average user. Processor you want Duo core or higher.

 

I have an AMD64 3400+ Proc, 1GB of ram. I know it's lower end for vista but it has a windows experience index rating of 4.2 and I've run all of the betas and RC's on it without any problems. That's why I was curious about the anti-virus piece. When I was testing betas and RC's I never really ran an anti-virus b/c i would test the latest beta and then wipe out the HDD etc.

On a side note, I've re-installed Vista and unchecked the "scan all files" setting and it's running better than before. I'm using all of the other blackspear settings but I've turned off "scan all files". I'm testing this to see if my experience is better than the last time I tried this. As long as I'm safe I don't have a problem with changing settings.

Thanks again for the feedback.