Acronis Realtime Protection makes PC noticeable slower

See forum topic: 40252 locks up at start up

Topic: Acronis Scheduler constantly requesting power preventing sleep

Topic: ACPHO Build 40252 or 40278

I would recommend that anyone experiencing any issues with the latest 40278 build open a Support case direct with Acronis to get this investigated by the development team!

I've already raised a ticket but got never any notice that it had arrived.

I guess I need to repeat to raise a ticket.

Andreas Manz wrote:

I've already raised a ticket but got never any notice that it had arrived.

I guess I need to repeat to raise a ticket.

Hello Andreas.

I have communicated the situation with the corresponding team.

You can expect a response from our side.

Have a nice day! 

Hello Jose

Thank you. I hope it helps.

I'd observed this noticeable slowdown after installing Windows 11 from scratch onto a new formatted partition on the PC of my wife. As soon as I had installed Acronis Cyber Protection 40278 the PC became slow for the first 10 minutes.

Actually I've deactivated Acronis Cyber Protection and Web Filtering and so Microsoft Defender became active.
Following av-test.org that's safe. Acronis is not listed at all and therefore just unknown.

Acronis Backup is great. But its realtime protection?

Kind regards, Andreas

Andreas Manz wrote:

Hello Jose

Thank you. I hope it helps.

I'd observed this noticeable slowdown after installing Windows 11 from scratch onto a new formatted partition on the PC of my wife. As soon as I had installed Acronis Cyber Protection 40278 the PC became slow for the first 10 minutes.

Actually I've deactivated Acronis Cyber Protection and Web Filtering and so Microsoft Defender became active.
Following av-test.org that's safe. Acronis is not listed at all and therefore just unknown.

Acronis Backup is great. But its realtime protection?

Kind regards, Andreas

Hello Andreas, thanks for the reply.

In fact is one of best options in the market and passed on the AV-test as in all the independent audits. 

Please check the following page with more details about it: 

https://www.acronis.com/en-eu/resource-center/resource/527/

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/acronis-true-image-2021s-integ…

Thanks in advance! 

For reference:

It looks like there is issues with version 40278 as its been pulled from the download page and a new release is offered 40338.

That makes two release that have now been pulled from general release 40252 & 40278

I would appreciated some frankness and if we can be told why these have been pulled and people are loosing confidence in your products.

Regards, Martyn

Martyn Higgs wrote:

For reference:

It looks like there is issues with version 40278 as its been pulled from the download page and a new release is offered 40338.

That makes two release that have now been pulled from general release 40252 & 40278

I would appreciated some frankness and if we can be told why these have been pulled and people are loosing confidence in your products.

Regards, Martyn

Hello Martyn.

If you are talking about this page https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/updates/ , we normally just leave there the details regarding the latest build. So there is the update for the latest Windows and MAC agent.

I passed your message to the team. So thanks you very much for your feedback and for sharing your concerns.

Hi Jose, 

That page is out of sync as it shows 40278 and the release notes show version 40338.

The page I was referring to is the https://account.acronis.com/ where you can logon and click on "Go to Downloads" only shows the following builds to download "Build 4.338, Build 40173, Build 40107"

I still think the forum community who use your products deserve a explanation on why two major GA releases were pulled?

How can we be comfortable in installing the latest release if there is a risk this one is also pulled?

I am not trying to be difficult, we use your products as either our main backup solution or AV or even both. These two features are at the heart of our machines so we need to feel comfortable they are performing as expected and we are not at risk of infection or backup failure.

Regards, Martyn

Very painfully slow just to get my Windows 11 Hyper-V VM with ACPHO 40278 to start up in order to update it to 40338.  All was fast prior to these latest (failed) update builds - will need to see how this latest build performs or whether it is going to a case of doing a Custom uninstall of Realtime protection in favour of reverting back to Windows Defender (as done for my other systems with ACPHO).

Martyn Higgs wrote:

Hi Jose, 

That page is out of sync as it shows 40278 and the release notes show version 40338.

The page I was referring to is the https://account.acronis.com/ where you can logon and click on "Go to Downloads" only shows the following builds to download "Build 4.338, Build 40173, Build 40107"

I still think the forum community who use your products deserve a explanation on why two major GA releases were pulled?

How can we be comfortable in installing the latest release if there is a risk this one is also pulled?

I am not trying to be difficult, we use your products as either our main backup solution or AV or even both. These two features are at the heart of our machines so we need to feel comfortable they are performing as expected and we are not at risk of infection or backup failure.

Regards, Martyn

Hello Martyn!

I understand your concerns and I have forwarded them to the team that manages the product.

As soon as I have an official statement I will let you know.

Thanks.

Initial findings for #40338 suggest there is still some performance impact on start up of Windows, loading the desktop icons, task bar icons etc, but this looks to improve more quickly as the amount of CPU claimed by Cyber Protect drops from around 10% down to zero!

Will need to see what the performance impact of ACPHO is after the VM has been turned off for a few days as was the case prior to installing 40338 when 40278 turned Windows into a quagmire for performance?

Steve Smith wrote:

Very painfully slow just to get my Windows 11 Hyper-V VM with ACPHO 40278 to start up in order to update it to 40338.  All was fast prior to these latest (failed) update builds - will need to see how this latest build performs or whether it is going to a case of doing a Custom uninstall of Realtime protection in favour of reverting back to Windows Defender (as done for my other systems with ACPHO).

Hello Steve, hope you are doing well.

Please share your output about the new build once you have updated.

Thanks in advance!

I've regressed to Build 40173 as I feel the latest builds are not fit for my main PC. The latest build 40338 (along with previous build 40278) effect the speed at which OneDrive starts at system boot.

I will look to upgrade to the latest when I see some positive reports from other users.

Thanks, Martyn

Hi all, I've just come here to report serious slowdown since installing 40338 - winodws 10 takes about 10 mins to fully boot and be ready to use.  I see I am not alone so will raise a support ticket.  my system used to be ready within about 45 seconds.

AlanS wrote:

Hi all, I've just come here to report serious slowdown since installing 40338 - winodws 10 takes about 10 mins to fully boot and be ready to use.  I see I am not alone so will raise a support ticket.  my system used to be ready within about 45 seconds.

Hello Alan.

Thanks for participating.

That should be investigated because it's not expected to take so long.

If you have any issues with the process while contacting our support, please let me know.

Thanks.

I suggest looking at the event logs to see what is going on during the boot sequence. A start might be the Event Logs\Windows Logs\System.

Thanks Bruno - sorry I can't make head nor tail of the event log.  I've run the Acronis system info and submitted a support ticket. my sys info is too large to upload but I think they will send me an alternative way to get the file to them.

Thanks Jose, I'll update here with any news on my case.

AlanS wrote:

Thanks Bruno - sorry I can't make head nor tail of the event log.  I've run the Acronis system info and submitted a support ticket. my sys info is too large to upload but I think they will send me an alternative way to get the file to them.

Thanks Jose, I'll update here with any news on my case.

Hello Alan.

I will leave notes in the case so we can try to accelerate the process of investigation.

Thanks in advance! 

Quick update after 3 days of having my Win 11 VM turned off.  Booted the VM this morning and was again painfully slow to reach what I would consider to be a workable responsive state with again Cyber Protect Service looking to be the key limiting factor.

This VM was performing fine with ACPHO 40173 build but the subsequent 40252, 40278 and now 40338 are causing an unacceptable performance impact even for a test VM.  The VM took around 7 - 9 minutes to become more responsive versus an identical Win 11 VM with ACPHO 40338 where Cyber Protect realtime protection is not installed is responsive in less than 2 minutes maximum.  The telling points are in how slow the taskbar is shown & populated with icons, how slow it is to open Task Manager, and equally slow for any information to be shown in the same, along with lack of response to any other actions such as opening the main menu etc.

I took good experience when I've switched off Realtime Protection and Web Filtering.

And then Microsoft Defender became active. That's fine for me.

Steve Smith wrote:

Quick update after 3 days of having my Win 11 VM turned off.  Booted the VM this morning and was again painfully slow to reach what I would consider to be a workable responsive state with again Cyber Protect Service looking to be the key limiting factor.

This VM was performing fine with ACPHO 40173 build but the subsequent 40252, 40278 and now 40338 are causing an unacceptable performance impact even for a test VM.  The VM took around 7 - 9 minutes to become more responsive versus an identical Win 11 VM with ACPHO 40338 where Cyber Protect realtime protection is not installed is responsive in less than 2 minutes maximum.  The telling points are in how slow the taskbar is shown & populated with icons, how slow it is to open Task Manager, and equally slow for any information to be shown in the same, along with lack of response to any other actions such as opening the main menu etc.

Hello Steve.

Thanks a lot for the updates. I will forward your comments to the team.

Hello all,

Just here to add my input that ACPHO with Active Protection turned on is also noticeably slowing down my computer responsiveness, especially when doing something with the file system.

For example, right clicking to create a new folder in Windows explorer takes about 3 seconds, and after actually entering a name and pressing enter, it takes about 10 seconds to complete the operation. 

With Active Protection paused, the same operations above are immediate.

However, I just tried and observed that after re-enabling Active Protection, the above operations seem to remain pretty responsive. Not quite as fast as with AP turned off, but better than initially.

Just another piece of data for this investigation.

Noel D'Souza wrote:

Hello all,

Just here to add my input that ACPHO with Active Protection turned on is also noticeably slowing down my computer responsiveness, especially when doing something with the file system.

For example, right clicking to create a new folder in Windows explorer takes about 3 seconds, and after actually entering a name and pressing enter, it takes about 10 seconds to complete the operation. 

With Active Protection paused, the same operations above are immediate.

However, I just tried and observed that after re-enabling Active Protection, the above operations seem to remain pretty responsive. Not quite as fast as with AP turned off, but better than initially.

Just another piece of data for this investigation.

Hello Noel.

Welcome to the forum!

I shared your comments with the team. A ticket was raised so we can investigate the issue ( 05842806 ).

You can expect a contact from our support as soon as possible.

Please update me here if you have any issues during the process.

Thanks in advance! 

This morning I booted my Win 11 Hyper-V VM and it took over 10 minutes before Cyber Protect Service reduced its CPU usage to render the VM usable!

I have now uninstalled Cyber Protect realtime protection via a Custom Uninstall and hey presto! the VM is now up and running in seconds again!  Now using Windows Defender!

Martyn Higgs wrote:

Hi Jose, 

That page is out of sync as it shows 40278 and the release notes show version 40338.

The page I was referring to is the https://account.acronis.com/ where you can logon and click on "Go to Downloads" only shows the following builds to download "Build 4.338, Build 40173, Build 40107"

I still think the forum community who use your products deserve a explanation on why two major GA releases were pulled?

How can we be comfortable in installing the latest release if there is a risk this one is also pulled?

I am not trying to be difficult, we use your products as either our main backup solution or AV or even both. These two features are at the heart of our machines so we need to feel comfortable they are performing as expected and we are not at risk of infection or backup failure.

Regards, Martyn

Hey Martin.

As mentioned before I have requested the statement from the team:

Dear Acronis user,

We apologise for the inconvenience.

We've decided to unpublish the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office product with build number 40278, as we've detected an issue affecting a minor segment of our users with a specific version of Anti-malware component installed.

As user trust in our product is most important to us, we've immediately replaced the old build with 40338, to prevent more users experiencing the same problem.

We’d like to ensure you that the issue is now fully resolved with the new build, even for users who have previously downloaded the build 40278.

Acronis team

HI Jose,

So you saying there shouldn't be any issue with build 40338 ? and that the Anti-malware component has also been updated for build 40278? was this update download along with the daily signature updates?

If you can confirm that the issue is fixed in build 40338, then I will proceed to upgrade to the latest release.

Thanks,

Martyn

Martyn, I would recommend exercising caution if upgrading to build 40338 - my own experience is that it introduces the same very poor performance as with the two withdrawn builds and I have now uninstalled the realtime protection feature because of this as detailed in my earlier post.

Hi all, particularly Jose, I have something very odd to report.  I hadn't got round to uninistalling and reinstallling as support suggested, but I saw a windows update waiting.  I decided to let the PC restart and expected it to take another 10 minutes to be ready, but after this update my PC boot speed is back to normal.  So whatever was the issue between ACPH and windows, it seems Microsoft have fixed it.  I will give it a day or two to make sure it's really back to normal, then update my support ticket.

Cheers
Alan

HI Alan, what  you stated is very interesting, is the update "KB5025239"? Looking forward to you reporting on how your system behaves in the next few days.

I might then give build 40338 another try, if it doesn't work I will unistal and re-install only the backup feature and use another AV provider (which is a pain as I've paid for the AV feature in ACPH :( ).

Interesting footnote on Windows update KB5025239:

I installed KB5025239 when it was in preview and I found my task schedular service crashed at every restart, the service would start succesfuly on the second attempt. I am unable to find out the reason, I have enabled crash on the process so it created a dump file but analysis with WinDBG or WhoCrashed doesn't show why, so still investigating.

Thanks, Martyn

AlanS wrote:

Hi all, particularly Jose, I have something very odd to report.  I hadn't got round to uninistalling and reinstallling as support suggested, but I saw a windows update waiting.  I decided to let the PC restart and expected it to take another 10 minutes to be ready, but after this update my PC boot speed is back to normal.  So whatever was the issue between ACPH and windows, it seems Microsoft have fixed it.  I will give it a day or two to make sure it's really back to normal, then update my support ticket.

Cheers
Alan

Hello Alan!

Thanks for the update.

Please let me know in a couple of day if the issue is gone after updating the Windows to the latest build. And thanks for sharing that information with us!

Wish you a nice day in advance! 

Hi Jose and Martin

The update in question was KB5025221 (I am on windows 10)  It might be similar in your build for Windows 11 but I can't say for sure.

System has been stable all day, will reboot later and if the reboot is still taking a minute or less will count it a success. So I will give my final update in a few hours.

Hi again Jose, and all.

Yes I am happy to say my issue is fixed, on windows 10, with the April windows update ref KB 5025221.  After a reboot the desktop appeared very quickly and the system was usuable in under a minute, and not the 10 mins I was seeing with ACPH b 40338 on win 10 prior to this update. 

I will update my support ticket to let the team know.

Thanks again for your support and guidance.

Hi Alan,

My head sank when you said Win10, I am running Win11 and its latest patch is KB5025239.

Unless they are both fixing the same thing, the question I would have what did MS patch that stopped ACPH from slowing down.

Surely Acronis test rigs that they use to test their GA releases (40338 ) would have shown simular slowdowns prior to KB5025221 being released.

Thanks,

Martyn

Update.

Installed latest Windows 11 patch KB5025239 then upgraded Acronis to build 40338.

With all the Acronis AV elements DISABLED and Microsoft Defender as my main AV my machine boots very quickly and navigating anything on my PC or on the web is quick. This behaviour is the same as when I am running with ACPH build 40173.

As soon as I ENABLE the AV elements my PC it boots extremely slowly, and any activity is like using a very under powered machine... it becomes totally unusable.

This is now your third release that has caused some people issues (two releases pulled). I am concluding I should not have purchased ACPH Premium and should have purchased the ACPH Essentials. 

You as a backup product is good as an anti-virus provider, I have lost faith and I will probably have to go and purchase another product (Malwarebytes, Avast, Emsisoft etc..).

My current subscription of ACPH Premium will probably have to be cancelled (unless you fix the issue) and then debate nearer the time if I go for ACPH Essentials or another backup provider like AOMEI BackUpper.

I've updated my support ticket and sent a copy to Acronis Support Management <managers@acronis.com>

Thanks

Martyn Higgs wrote:

Installed latest Windows 11 patch KB5025239 then upgraded Acronis to build 40338.

With all the Acronis AV elements DISABLED and Microsoft Defender as my main AV my machine boots very quickly and navigating anything on my PC or on the web is quick. This behaviour is the same as when I am running with ACPH build 40173.

As soon as I ENABLE the AV elements my PC it boots extremely slowly, and any activity is like using a very under powered machine... it becomes totally unusable.

My own experience mirrors that described by Martyn above - I have now uninstalled realtime protection and reinstated Defender to regain acceptable performance until Acronis resolve this performance impact once and for all time!

This is not good. Reports like this are the reason I have not installed any recent updates. It evinces poor quality control. 

Ian

I've had the same experience on my Asus laptop and my desktop. The laptop was essentially unusable, took 5 minutes for the taskbar to appear, 10 minutes to become useable, random program crashes along the way, etc. The desktop was at least responsive and functional, but now it causes Task Scheduler to crash with every reboot so many tasks don't run. Uninstalling the product solves all problems. I've sent in a support request, although it appears they are well aware of the problems now. 

I followed Steve Smith's lead and removed the AV, etc. protection. I mostly want this for a backup, anyway. Plus, I found that the real time protection was interfering with other programs but not notifying me it was doing so. After pulling my hair out for a few days, a pop-up occurred to notify me that a program was suspicious. Finally, I understood what was happening and as soon as I added my programs to the exclusion list, all is well. 

For me, the backup product has been great for the 15 years I've been using it, but I'm not sold on the AV part of it. Thankfully, I can turn that off. 

Jose Pedro Magalhaes 

I notice this thread is marked as solved, but I am unable to find a solution to the reported slowdown with AV active.

Please advise?

Thanks

Martyn Higgs wrote:

Jose Pedro Magalhaes 

I notice this thread is marked as solved, but I am unable to find a solution to the reported slowdown with AV active.

Please advise?

Thanks

Hello Martyn.

The thread was marked as resolved by the user who created the topic.  

Regarding the issue you reported I saw the ticket was closed. I have re-opened the same case so we can provide you updates.

Thanks in advance!

Just to echo the comments above, I'm having the same issue on Windows 11 22H2 with build 40338. Slow to get to the login screen with Protection turned on. I've narrowed it down to the Real-time Protection option (anti-virus?). Turning only that off seems to do the trick (though of course, you then have no AV protection...). 

I've installed the latest build v40729 and took the plung to try using the AV elements, so far no slowdowns.

For refence my OS build is as follows: Windows 11 Pro 23H2

So the issue in build 40338 when AV is enabled and causes slowdowns, must have been fixed in the latest release.

Only problem I have which is being investigated by support is where I can no longer use ASRM to recover my machine, I have to use WinPE USB device to restore.

Martyn Higgs wrote:

I've installed the latest build v40729 and took the plung to try using the AV elements, so far no slowdowns.

For refence my OS build is as follows: Windows 11 Pro 23H2

So the issue in build 40338 when AV is enabled and causes slowdowns, must have been fixed in the latest release.

Only problem I have which is being investigated by support is where I can no longer use ASRM to recover my machine, I have to use WinPE USB device to restore.

 

Hello!

Thanks for updating the thread and for sharing details.

Best regards.