TeaTimer CPU load after startup thoughts

[nagan]

Ok agreed that it(cpu spike) is not a bug and a intended function as the people who are in close contact with spybot say.
My query is when the real time alert is present it will always prevent a wrong file from acting.What is the use in scanning files at the start when a detailed scan option is already available.
I used ESET trial and presently Avira.They go about their jobs without the need for a high CPU usage.
Whatever be the reason people do get paranoid on seeing a consistently higher usage of CPU ,because such a symptom preceeds a crash.Would not know whether it is an improvement.
The best tradeoff should be a scan if need be with the minimum of resource used.

[wyrmrider]

good points Nagan
It appears that the scan of running processes on first access is what's taking the t-timer-time
As opposed to a system wide scan I do not kow how you can do any useful work till the system is secure
I have confidence in Spybot team getting a grip on this

have you had any issues with sd-helper as others have reported.

I mentioned AV as there have been several posts about alleged interference with AVG 8 or AVG8 anti-spyware additions. I'v seen no such reports for Avast or Antivir

[PepiMK]

We've moved the other regular hints to standard balloons now as well, which should, as a side effect, make those constant forth and back with resilient software that doesn't accept someone is not accepting their changes less desktop cluttering.
Thanks for the hint that many users don't really want to know about these things as well - I went ahead and added an option to either show them or not to give the user the choice here. The point of it was to show some progress while processes are scanned on startup, so we decided to have it enabled by default.

Caching between seasons works fine now as well, making a rescan only necessary if either the database has been updated, or a file has been changed.

As for choosing between the two methods, we decided that it might be best to automatically switch depending on the memory a machine has available.

We'll be looking at possible improvements to the low-mem method again tomorrow, but after that, we should have a new TeaTimer for testing available here (and I hope the new verbose mode has enough output to even find that permanent stall)

[nagan]

We've moved the other regular hints to standard balloons now as well, which should, as a side effect, make those constant forth..................
As for choosing between the two methods, we decided that it might be best to automatically switch depending on the memory a machine has available.

We'll be looking at possible improvements to the low-mem method again tomorrow, but after that, we should have a new TeaTimer for testing available here (and I hope the new verbose mode has enough output to even find that permanent stall)

Thanks for the reply and giving the thoughts a look into.But whatever you say people would not like to see a spike of around 50% (in dual core) or more in single core systems.The pertinent question (ofcourse from a totally non-technical angle) is when an antivirus does not need such an extended scan why should spybot do?Scanning memory hardly takes time like any Task Manager will prove.I think Spybot is doing a little more (you are the best judge) in the initial scans.Could you not make them low priority ones or change the method of scan?I have been using spybot and am very impressed with it.This 1.6 is proving a little difficult which I am sure would be sorted out soon.

[md usa spybot fan]

nagan:

One point that has not been arisen during any discussions concerning the CPU utilization of TeaTimer is the fact it runs with a priority of "Low". Although it is using a lot of CPU time during startup, I personally have not observed any adverse affects in the performance of other processes during that time.

Incidentally, after the 2008-07-16 updates there appears to be 146536 blacklisted processes vs. the 88292 I cited above. TeaTimer is using more CPU time and yet I have still not seen any adverse affects on other processes during TeaTimer startup.

__________

Side note:

In most PCs the processor (CPU) is the single most expensive component and is generally priced by its speed. Theoretically if it is sitting idle you are not getting the bang for your buck.

[nagan]

nagan:

One point that has not been arisen during any discussions concerning the CPU utilization of TeaTimer is the fact it runs with a priority of "Low". Although it is using a lot of CPU time during startup, I personally have not observed any adverse affects in the performance of other processes during that time.

Incidentally, after the 2008-07-16 updates there appears to be 146536 blacklisted processes vs. the 88292 I cited above. TeaTimer is using more CPU time and yet I have still not seen any adverse affects on other processes during TeaTimer startup.

__________

Side note:

In most PCs the processor (CPU) is the single most expensive component and is generally priced by its speed. Theoretically if it is sitting idle you are not getting the bang for your buck.

Agreed.But the issue is to what extent of time it can possess the cpu.I see some program whose spike is limited to few seconds like eset or avira.Well it would only make sure if there were balloons on what exactly spybot is doing during that time.

[PepiMK]

TeaTimer-beta-1.6.1.21.zip

Five .reg files allow toggling of the discussed things (debug mode to have more details in Resident.log; switching between the two scan engine modes).

Balloons are enabled by default, can be disabled from the context menu of the tray icon.

One thing I do still find annoying is that he balloons stay for at least 10 seconds (or was it 15)? That's a Windows limitation designed to make sure the user notices them, smaller values are not possible. I added a final "All new processes have been scanned" message to avoid the impression that the last process would take very long compared to earlier ones.

As for the reason this takes longer: Spybot-S&D is optimized for doing a full system scan, not exactly for scanning single files. Antivirus applications do build one or few hash values of a file and look that up in their database. Spybot-S&D is much faster for the complete scan, but slower on individual scans