What Causes Antimalware Service Executable High Resource Usage?
MsMpEng.exe can make a hard drive or SSD work particularly hard when it conducts a system scan. Like other antivirus software, Windows Defender periodically performs scans to make sure nothing is running on a PC that shouldn’t be, in addition to real-time monitoring. That shouldn’t be a problem on higher-end laptops and desktop PCs. Still, the Antimalware Service Executable has been know to use a disproportionate amount of system resources in budget laptops.
How to Fix Antimalware Service Executable High CPU Usage
If MsMpEng.exe is hogging system resources, wait a few minutes. It’s possible that the system is undergoing a full scan, and that once it’s finished, the resources used by that process will go back to normal. If you want to make sure that a scan like that doesn’t happen in the future, you can also take some steps to have more control over what the Antimalware Service Executable does and when.
