How to disable ALL Acronis antivirus services

Hello David,

Acronis Cyber Protection and Acronis Active Protection services are marked as "NOT_STOPPABLE" and "NOT_PAUSABLE" by design as a part of self-protection mechanism. In current implementation the services can't be manually stopped or restarted, which is why to resolve any issues caused by these service a device reboot would be required, only possible workaround at the moment.

However, at the same time we understand that your customers is not using any Active or Cyber Protection features and having those services unmanageable looks like an issue to them.

1. For customers using Standard Edition without Active Protection functionality this shouldn't be an issue however, but the services are still running and are not stoppable.

2. Development team is currently estimating and planning the implementation that would allow to avoid running services that are not actively used or at least removing the dependencies where possible.

3. Preliminary estimations to provide delivery dates of this feature were not yet provided.

4. An internal development task with ID AMP-2649 was provided by the Security Team that we can follow, but as of now it's in the early state with no dates confirmed or even suggested.

Thank you.

Hello David,

We need more info about 3rd party antivirus product from another vendor that you are trying to install so we can ensure that internal development task AMP-2649 will help and you'll be able to use both without conflicts of the services.

Name, vendor, exact version and build, running services, OS where we get these problems.

Thank you.

I think it's pretty arrogant to not allow users to disable services.  I did stop AcronisActiveProtectionService - it was hogging my CPU - but as you said above, I can't stop AcronisCyberProtectionService.  So here it two months later, I have Acronis TrueImage 2021 and the problem is still there. FIX THIS!!!

We use Acronis to back up over 300 machines.  Recently I was troubleshooting issues with machines that looked like a problem with two antivirus/malware programs running at the same time.  We only use Sophos as our antivirus and make sure all others are disabled.  So I thought, maybe the user installed something.  I see this service for Cyber Protection as the culprit.  So I wonder what the user installed this time?  Turns out that we got it as part of an update to our Acronis BACKUP software! WTF!?  So now we have 300+ machines running both Sophos and Cyber Protection and seeing all kinds of issues, new issues crop up every day.  So now I'm scrambling to find a way to fix this mess.  any suggestions?  And it's not just the Cyber Protection, we've identified issues with Active Protection that manifest even when disabled, so it needs to be comletely removed.  The only workaround we currently know of is to remove Acronis from all machines.  If it comes to that, then we will be looking for a true backup solution to get away from this disaster.

How do you disable Acronis Cyber Protection Service?  If I try to Stop or Disable, I get Access Denied.  I need to know how to remove and disable the anti-virus components of Acronis as they are causing all kinds of problems, interfering with Sophos, hangs, performance, etc. Every day we find a new issue that it's causing. This is critical. We only use it for backup and now it's our top problem.

Boreas Jeff wrote:

How do you disable Acronis Cyber Protection Service?  If I try to Stop or Disable, I get Access Denied.  I need to know how to remove and disable the anti-virus components of Acronis as they are causing all kinds of problems, interfering with Sophos, hangs, performance, etc. Every day we find a new issue that it's causing. This is critical. We only use it for backup and now it's our top problem.

Dear Boreas,

first of all, please accept our apologies for the negative experience. Currently, the user can disable Acronis Cyber Protection feature from the Protection Plan (disable "Active Protection" or "Antivirus & Antimalware protection" in the Protection Plan).

The services active_protection_service.exe and cyber-protect-service.exe specifically are always installed together with the agent. We do have an incoming feature request to exclude Antimalware components from being installed (internal ID for reference RM-1409 Allow Agent installation without Antimalware components). I've added your feedback as a vote for this change, thank you!

Leon McKinney wrote:

I think it's pretty arrogant to not allow users to disable services.  I did stop AcronisActiveProtectionService - it was hogging my CPU - but as you said above, I can't stop AcronisCyberProtectionService.  So here it two months later, I have Acronis TrueImage 2021 and the problem is still there. FIX THIS!!!

Hello Leon,

thank you for your feedback! I've created a change request based on your comment (internal ID for reference TI-213392 Allow installation without Antimalware components). The product management will consider the changes based on the collected feedback.
In the current implementation, we cannot allow disabling the services, because it would make them exposed to the external threats (malicious processes will have the possibility to disable our protection). However, when protection is deactivated (go to Protection section, click Pause protection and select Turn off protection or select the length of the pause), related Acronis processes and services while still active should use minimal resources. 

Note, that a perpetual license Acronis True Image 2021 Standard and Acronis True Image Essential subscription do not include the Antivirus. 

Hi

I think that I might have the answer to your problem.

I have recently started programing first in C++ but when I could not find a way of using Unicode characters. My location in Spain meant that I needed the accented characters the € and ¿. I transferred my attention to Python. I then ran into other problems. When I used pyinstaller to write the .py script into .exe the file appeared in the correct folder but after approximately 2 seconds it was reduced to zero bytes.

At first I thought that this was the intervention of my Norton software. I have found this to be particularly aggressive in the past. So I disabled Norton temporarily and it still happened. I then turned my attention to Acronis.

With WE open in one window showing the .exe file destination; Task Manager in another window showing the Acronis modules I ran the compiler again and low and behold when the .exe file appeared in its destination the CPU usage for Acronis Cyber Protect Service jumped to 20% for a few seconds; the .exe was reduced to zero bytes and then the CPU requirement dropped to near zero.

I then disabled the Cyber Protect in Acronis via. The Protection option and tried again. The file stayed in place, was there some 15 minutes later and after re-activation the protection is still there.

My conclusion therefore is that the problem is solved by temporarily turning off this protection and in my case with Norton installed I will turn it off permanently as this program will provide the same protection.

Trying this solution temporarily may solve your problem.

Hi

Why do I have to have all of those things running even though I have directly disabled them in Acronis settings? I installed a BACKUP solution, not an antivirus. I don't need all this crap running in the background.

Why do those setting exist in the first place? To give me an illusion of choice?
It is now getting to a point now where I don't trust my backup solution. Guess I will have to find a new one.

I ran into this issue minutes after upgrading.. wish I hadnt. I purchase a backup program I expect a backup program. I tried to turn off protection only to get  the " Cannot Disable All Active Protections" error.. and I HAVE the standard 3 pc perpetual license.. fix this.. I wish I would have tried before upgrade.. This may be the reason I need not to upgrade again and end use of Acronis altogether.

I'm having this problem as well.  I just upgraded to Acronis 2021 and I got a notification that a scan had been completed, which I thought was odd since I couldn't imagine what it was scanning.  Come to find out that not only did Acronis "quarantine" some of my files, but I can't restore them, it just says "cannot restore filename". 

This is like the literal opposite of backup software.

Luckily I was able to grab them off my NAS and put them back where they belong, but I can only assume Acronis is going to quarantine them again next time the scan runs.  Though considering the files it quarantined are on a RAID that Acronis isn't even supposed to be accessing for backups, let alone virus scanning, who knows what will happen.

I was able to disable Ransomware Protection and Web Filtering, but when I disable Real Time Protection and hit OK it's still on when I recheck the settings.  I can't disable Vulnerability Assessment either, same issue.

Similarly, if I change the Antivirus Scan to "Do Not Schedule" it just returns to Weekly when I check the settings again.

And no, I don't want to go around making exclusions every time Acronis thinks a file is unsafe, because that's not Acronis' job.

Guys, this is a real issue and it needs to be fixed.

I have the same problem Since installing Acronis 2021 my Mac got slow, showing the Spinning Beach Ball.
In Activity Monitor I see cyber-protect-service is using 99,5% of CPU !
This cannot be disabled or switched off in the Acronis settings.  Even when switching off Protection the Acronis setting, cyber-protect-service continues to operate.

This make Acronis practically unusable.  Is the only solution to uninstall the program completely?

ACRONIS, FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY!

SmashBro, erik santiago, R, Ivan Van Lommen

sorry to know about your negative experience with our protection features! I've registered your feedback as votes for the existing change request TI-213392 Allow installation without Antimalware components.

I've registered your feedback as votes for the existing change request TI-213392

Please do the same for me.
I purchased a a private version of Acronis 2021.
At work we use many Acronis 2019 and 2020 licenses. I'll postpone any upgrades until it will be possible to install and activate ONLY the backup functionality.

Hello Karl , thank you, added your vote!

Thank you Ekaterina.

In the meantime is there a safe method to downgrade back to Acronis 2020 so I can stop it from deleting my files?

Hello! I would like to add my vote to request TI-213392. Version 2021 was very aggresive on CPU from start, even if you try to disable what you can disable with antimalware. But the last update 343400 made it completely unusable. It took hours to start and whean it at lost got up running nothing could be done without further long waiting. I have unistalled it and reinstalled 2020. What a relief to run that version.

Lars Olsson

I just updated to True Image 2021 Update 3 (Build 35860) and am now able to turn off virus scanning and real time protection.  I'm not sure if that was part of this most recent update or something else as it's not listed in the release notes, but truly thank you for fixing it regardless.

My Acronis True Image application continues to freeze up.  Seems to be tied to the part of the programming that Applies User Settings, but even when after "sometimes" getting past Applying User Settings (10+ minutes of inactivity), the application freezes when attempting to select any of the available options.

Why has the 2021 upgrade proved so troublesome?  Can someone please help?  I'm getting ready to install another backup solution.  Five (5) attempts to resolve this issue with Acronis support have me continuing to battle application freeze-ups, even after seeming to be temporarily fixed.

Hoerééé, disabled acronis security and my computer is working again normally !!!!!!

May I ask the exact steps you took to disable Acronis Security?

Gregory Kline wrote:

May I ask the exact steps you took to disable Acronis Security?

I'm also having an issue with these two services. We have 5 or 6 licenses for ATI 2020, and while the backup works great, this active protection issue does not. Just today a machine started abnormally because of the active protection service overloading resources.

We didn't purchase protection. Like others, we already have it. So just give us a way to disable these services and stop stalling.

Richard F wrote:

I'm also having an issue with these two services. We have 5 or 6 licenses for ATI 2020, and while the backup works great, this active protection issue does not. Just today a machine started abnormally because of the active protection service overloading resources.

We didn't purchase protection. Like others, we already have it. So just give us a way to disable these services and stop stalling.

Read messages 19, 20, 21.

This piece of garbage STILL wont stop the protection services. I hit the button to turn it off permanently but it started up again at reboot then gives me the "cannot disable all Active protection features." error.. what a p.o.s. It keeps putting random files in quarantine that are most definitely NOT virus.. because the anti-virus and anti-malware I CHOOSE to run clears them. Fix this crap.. or don't.. at this point not worth the frustration.. I will find another solution.. and recommend that no businesses I deal with waste there money or time on this crap.. used to be the best.. now the absolute worst!

Here no problem, see picture. It is in dutch and it says:

Active protection is disabled.

Protection is permanent stopped.

R wrote:

Thank you Ekaterina.

In the meantime is there a safe method to downgrade back to Acronis 2020 so I can stop it from deleting my files?

Hi! If you have a subscription license, I could send you the download link for a previous product version. Please let me know, if the old installation file is needed. 

Hello Everyone,

registered your feedback in the change request TI-213392 Allow installation without Antimalware components. If you experience any issues causing the application or system slowness, we' strongly recommend reporting them to the support team, so that our engineers can find the cause and fix it. 

Hi! If you have a subscription license, I could send you the download link for a previous product version. Please let me know, if the old installation file is needed. 

Jin Cho wrote:

Can you please include a link to old installation file. Since the upgrade I have clicking noise in my music production software which is resource hungry.  You have to allow total disabling of any software it's just good practice and I'm dissapointed that you are not listening to your users above.. it sounds like a poorly thought up feature 

Hi! Please check your private messages for the installation file 

Please provide me link to previous version that does not have this issue.  

Count me into that request for TI-213392. ATI 2020 was perfect me along with the Anti Ransomware which doesn't cause any issues.  Then  the upgrade came along. Conflicts and problems which I don't need. I was refunded and rolled back to 2020

If the request is acted on, I'll be back for the upgrade again

Roger Chambers wrote:

Count me into that request for TI-213392. ATI 2020 was perfect me along with the Anti Ransomware which doesn't cause any issues.  Then  the upgrade came along. Conflicts and problems which I don't need. I was refunded and rolled back to 2020

If the request is acted on, I'll be back for the upgrade again

Roger, added your vote, thank you! Please note that a perpetual license and Acronis True Image Essential subscription don't have the Antimalware functionality.

Lance Hunter wrote:

Please provide me link to previous version that does not have this issue.  

Hi! Please check your private messages  (at the top of a forum page click on My account and then on Dialogs)

Hello,

The Good...

We recently purchased 6 Acronis True Image 2021 standard perpetual licenses to evaluate full image backups and to clone PCs. All our PCs have one of more duplicate backups. We used Acronis Universal Restore to clone a Dell to a Lenovo. The new system just worked. That included moving Office 2019, Visual Studio 2019, and many other software programs. Only had minor cleanup to uninstall Dell software and reinstall some Lenovo drivers and software. Didn't expect Acronis to take care of this.

We would rate this service 5 of 5, but documentation on how to do this efficiently as 3 of 5. We have taken enough notes to reliably reproduce by different individuals. All good up to this point. Would have heartily recommended product at this point if it were not for the bad and the ugly described below.

The Bad...

We were unaware that Acronis had not provisioned a custom install that does not include its Active Protection and Cyber protection. Like many others in the forum, we find it very intrusive to force these services on users.

Malware, by definition is something that runs, does stuff that you do not want or expect, consumes CPU/Memory resources, etc. that it shouldn't. Active Protection and Cyber protection are, by our definition, malware because we did not want it or expect it with our purchase. Our bad for not doing better research.

When you try to stop malware, it usually restarts itself, sometimes creating multiple copies in the process. Malware requires painful intervention to get it stopped.

The Ugly...

We did the following to get cleaned up installs on four PCs, which are now well behaved until updates overwrite our changes (the bad and ugly). We can now boot and get no startup log errors and can run Acronis GUI without setting off error logs. For some, this might be an acceptable solution. That is why I am sharing this process. However, we offer consulting service to businesses and cannot use or recommend a product that requires brittle intervention. If we tried to deploy a 100 or 300 licenses at a business, we would likely incur a large financial liability because it would continually break over time.

Here is what we did.

Changed file names:

    - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\ActiveProtection\anti_ransomware_service.stopped.exe

    - C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\Agent\bin\adp-agent.stopped.exe

Changed Registry:

    Registry Key: AcronisActiveProtectionService
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 2 => 0
    
    Registry Key: AcronisCyberProtectionService
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 4 => 0
    
    Registry Key: mmsminisrv
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 2 => 0
    
    Services Altered: Run services.msc
        Under Recovery, set failures to Take No Action and reset fail count to 1000 days. This may not be necessary.
        Acronis Active Protection (TM) Service
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Agent Core Service
            Changed to Disabled
        Acronis Cyber Protection Service
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Managed Machine Service Mini
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Mobile Backup Server
            Changed to Disabled
        Acronis Mobile Backup Status Server
            Changed to Disabled

Your needs may vary and these settings have only been checked for the standard perpetual licenses that we purchased.

I hope Acronis will decouple backup/recovery/cloning completely from Active Protection and Cyber security. Please do not foist services on unsuspecting customers that are strictly coming to you for your most excellent backup/recovery/cloning capabilities.

I might take a serious look at some of your other intra-network solutions, not the cloud, but not while they are bundled into one application. Hint... keep them separate as licensable, purchasable modules. Let me choose what I want and need. No surprises. I will monitor Acronis for a while to see if there is any improvement here. If not, we'll move on to find a different intranet solution or may be forced to write our own.

Happy mole whacking to all...

Simpel: Ik wil Acronis True Image ZONDER antimalware !!!!

Regel dat..

Ekaterina wrote:

R wrote:

Thank you Ekaterina.

In the meantime is there a safe method to downgrade back to Acronis 2020 so I can stop it from deleting my files?

Hi! If you have a subscription license, I could send you the download link for a previous product version. Please let me know, if the old installation file is needed. 

Please put in a vote for me for this change as well, and message me the link for the old installation.

Warren Hayden wrote:

Hello,

The Good...

We recently purchased 6 Acronis True Image 2021 standard perpetual licenses to evaluate full image backups and to clone PCs. All our PCs have one of more duplicate backups. We used Acronis Universal Restore to clone a Dell to a Lenovo. The new system just worked. That included moving Office 2019, Visual Studio 2019, and many other software programs. Only had minor cleanup to uninstall Dell software and reinstall some Lenovo drivers and software. Didn't expect Acronis to take care of this.

We would rate this service 5 of 5, but documentation on how to do this efficiently as 3 of 5. We have taken enough notes to reliably reproduce by different individuals. All good up to this point. Would have heartily recommended product at this point if it were not for the bad and the ugly described below.

The Bad...

We were unaware that Acronis had not provisioned a custom install that does not include its Active Protection and Cyber protection. Like many others in the forum, we find it very intrusive to force these services on users.

Malware, by definition is something that runs, does stuff that you do not want or expect, consumes CPU/Memory resources, etc. that it shouldn't. Active Protection and Cyber protection are, by our definition, malware because we did not want it or expect it with our purchase. Our bad for not doing better research.

When you try to stop malware, it usually restarts itself, sometimes creating multiple copies in the process. Malware requires painful intervention to get it stopped.

The Ugly...

We did the following to get cleaned up installs on four PCs, which are now well behaved until updates overwrite our changes (the bad and ugly). We can now boot and get no startup log errors and can run Acronis GUI without setting off error logs. For some, this might be an acceptable solution. That is why I am sharing this process. However, we offer consulting service to businesses and cannot use or recommend a product that requires brittle intervention. If we tried to deploy a 100 or 300 licenses at a business, we would likely incur a large financial liability because it would continually break over time.

Here is what we did.

Changed file names:

    - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\ActiveProtection\anti_ransomware_service.stopped.exe

    - C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\Agent\bin\adp-agent.stopped.exe

Changed Registry:

    Registry Key: AcronisActiveProtectionService
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 2 => 0
    
    Registry Key: AcronisCyberProtectionService
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 4 => 0
    
    Registry Key: mmsminisrv
        ErrorControl 1 => 0
        Start 2 => 0
    
    Services Altered: Run services.msc
        Under Recovery, set failures to Take No Action and reset fail count to 1000 days. This may not be necessary.
        Acronis Active Protection (TM) Service
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Agent Core Service
            Changed to Disabled
        Acronis Cyber Protection Service
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Managed Machine Service Mini
            Changed to Disabled, but after reboot, it was changed to Boot
        Acronis Mobile Backup Server
            Changed to Disabled
        Acronis Mobile Backup Status Server
            Changed to Disabled

Your needs may vary and these settings have only been checked for the standard perpetual licenses that we purchased.

I hope Acronis will decouple backup/recovery/cloning completely from Active Protection and Cyber security. Please do not foist services on unsuspecting customers that are strictly coming to you for your most excellent backup/recovery/cloning capabilities.

I might take a serious look at some of your other intra-network solutions, not the cloud, but not while they are bundled into one application. Hint... keep them separate as licensable, purchasable modules. Let me choose what I want and need. No surprises. I will monitor Acronis for a while to see if there is any improvement here. If not, we'll move on to find a different intranet solution or may be forced to write our own.

Happy mole whacking to all...

I have 2018 version and have been ignoring their requests for update. They somehow managed to attack me by  putting this 'protection' MALWARE on my machine! without me updating! So... I did some digging, as you can too. This is not a "real software company" anymore. It is an investor shell company, now for the purpose of making dividends (cash). ALERT the public and every site you can that Acronis is now Malware infected. USE the Windows backup. I am going to Microsoft - hesitation but I will. Now you know why Acronis is a 32-bit program - it WILL NEVER be made a 64-bit. There are no programmers at the company (the investors use outside consultants). I too, changed the filename and it took my WIN10 and twisted it inside and out. No icons on start page. You will NEVER get a moral response - good grief. Investors are all over the world and could care less about a program running in the background which cannot be turned off and hogging your CPU. UNINSTALL ACRONIS. TRY ANOTHER BACKUP (it'll hurt for awhile). DO NOT CONTINUE TO FEED THE INVESTORS.

 

Hi! I have a subscription license, please, could you send me the download link for a previous product version just with Backup, please, nothing else. Please let me know

Hello, is there any chance I will have the answer, please? Its very important, I have big troubles using and combining Acronis security, I need just Backup and I need to resolve a big problem now with the unwanted security in there. Please! I disabled that services, but not sure all is gone..

Miroslav, you may be able to download a previous product version from the Acronis Product Updates page which has links to the latest / final versions of a range of different Acronis products.

If you have an active subscription product then you should open a Support ticket direct with Acronis Support and raise any issues you have with them, including asking to be provided with a version of the product which meets your requirements.

This is horrible, I was using True Image Home 2010 and upgraded to 2021 and now I see 10 other services running!  I tried disabling them, didn't work. I tried msconfig and removed them from starting, and they still are there on reboot. My entire machine is lagging now. I need a refund for this, this is a mess.

Please see KB 21242: Refund policy for Personal products for information that should help you if you want to request a refund for your recent purchase.

Please submit Feedback directly to Acronis (use the tool provided in the GUI Help section) and ask for your vote to be added to the Acronis internal feature request: TI-213392 Allow installation without Antimalware components

Miroslav Bulka wrote:

Hi! I have a subscription license, please, could you send me the download link for a previous product version just with Backup, please, nothing else. Please let me know

Hello Miroslav,

could you please share your serial number in a private message? Under your account I only see a perpetual license of Acronis True Image 2021 which unfortunately cannot be used to activate an older version. Otherwise you'd need to request downgrade from Acronis support team, 

Yesterday I installed the the latest Acronis 2021 update.

While I still have all protection disabled, there are 12 Acronis tasks continuously running,
several of them with some workload, see 2 screenshot extracts below.
While each of the tasks seems to have a load of less than 0.9% (on an Intel Core i9),
Acronis still has BY FAR the highest processor usage when the computer is idle.

Could the Acronis developers PLEASE change this so the task are not started, when threat protection is disabled?
Or not consume processing power, if starting cannot be disabled?

Also, shouldn't this be 64bit tasks?
 

Thanks a lot!

Virtum wrote:

Ekaterina wrote:

R wrote:

Thank you Ekaterina.

In the meantime is there a safe method to downgrade back to Acronis 2020 so I can stop it from deleting my files?

Hi! If you have a subscription license, I could send you the download link for a previous product version. Please let me know, if the old installation file is needed. 

Please put in a vote for me for this change as well, and message me the link for the old installation.

Hi! Added your vote and sent you the link in a private message 

Should be very fine to use your perfect backup software (and not protection) once I have also another in place and disabling it is not the correct procedure. So, yes, it should be very fine to have Just Only Backup.

Miroslav Bulka wrote:

Should be very fine to use your perfect backup software (and not protection) once I have also another in place and disabling it is not the correct procedure. So, yes, it should be very fine to have Just Only Backup.

Miroslav, thank you for sharing your opinion! Added the comment as a vote for the change request.  

OK, Goodbye Acronis, welcome Macrium Reflect, works perfect in all ways.

>> OK, Goodbye Acronis, welcome Macrium Reflect, works perfect in all ways.

At twice the price.

Not twice the price, I am talking about and working with the free version !