True Image 2021 - Updater constantly consumes processor resources
Acronis\Agent\bin\updater.exe
~10-15%
The only way to solve the problem, is to kill the updater.exe process.
I request assistance.
Active Protection is enabled.
Acronis True Image 2021 Build 39216
Ok, but do you have the antivirus options enabled or not?
On the Protection panel page, are there any Detected issues or any processes being 'Managed' by AAP?
Screen shots of the Protection panel pages would also be helpful.
No issues so far according to the protection panel.
Can it be that we are talking about different version? I am using Acronis TrueImage 2021.
Thanks for the screen images, these confirm that you have ATI 2021 Perpetual / Standard version using the default settings.
The only difference between the perpetual and premium versions is the additional options for realtime protection (Acronis Cyber Protection antivirus feature) which gives some further options in the Protection Settings pages.
I have 3 x PC's running ATI 2021 Perpetual and am not seeing the issue with Updater taking lots of processor resources.
One option that you can consider is to remove the scheduled task entries for the Updater component and see if this will help?
The easiest method of seeing these entries is to use the MVP Assistant tool and look at the Acronis Configuration page where it lists all the Internal Tasks for the background services & processes run under the covers by ATI 2021, where you will see the various updater tasks listed.
Once you identify the specific Internal Task, you can then remove those scheduled task entries using the Scheduler Manager tool.
See the attached screen shots from the MVP Assistant tool and Acronis Scheduler Manager.
Note: the list of internal tasks comes from ATI 2021 Premium and the Internal Tasks identifiers are different for each PC.
The files when uploaded had the names as shown in the image below but those names will be changed after the upload!
I have checked the Acronis Scheduler Manager. There are no tasks for the updater.exe
However, the program is constantly consuming resources.
This does not occur on a daily basis. Rather every 3 days.
I have disabled Active Protection completely, yet the updater.exe still runs at undefined intervals.
Unfortunately that is now how ATI works despite all the new Protection features being disabled!
As mentioned previously above, you can use the Acronis Scheduler Manager tool to remove the entries in the scheduler that are created to run various update tasks in the background but the only other way is to hack the application and remove the background services but with the risk of breaking the application!
It is hoped that Acronis will provide a new recoded version of the new ACPHO application where the user will be able to do a selective install and be able to not install all the new protection features and thus avoid this scenario - but when and if this will happen isn't showing in my crystal ball at this time! Such changes would only be available on subscription to allow users to pay for the privilege of not having these features installed!!!
FYI, with respect to the MVP Assistant and Scheduler Manager, you need to Run as Administrator to see all the internal Acronis tasks. If you run MVP Assistant as administrator and then start Scheduler Manager from the MVP Assistant menu, it will start as administrator.
As I said before, there are no Task at the MVP Assistant and Scheduler Manager for the updater.exe available.
I have checked the windows eventlogs.
The only option to stop the updater.exe would be to rename the .exe file which may need to be done when booted from rescue media or a Linux distro live CD/DVD, but this is likely to then cause extra error logging by the Acronis processes that want to run it.
I could rename the updater.exe
Could you please tell me what exactly is the function of updater.exe?
I have seen interesting security eventlogs, where the updater.exe tries to connect to other clients/ips on my network.
Why should it do this? That makes no sense to me.
See KB 65464: Acronis True Image 2021: Windows services and processes where Acronis give their official description of the purpose of each of these components, including updater.exe.
| updater.exe | Manages protection updates |
The description is not very helpful but makes me wonder if it is looking for other PC's on your network to see if they are also running ATI and could share updates without needing to re-download them again? Maybe like the options in Windows Update to do this? If it is doing this type of sharing, then to my way of thinking, this is a security risk unless there are additional safeguards in place to ensure that any shared updates have not been compromised by malware etc. All of this should be totally irrelevant and inactive when the user has selected to turn off all Acronis Protection PERMANENTLY!
Pootch,
I am a bit confused. You say that the program is constantly consuming resources, but you also say that it occurs every three days.
When it consumes a lot of resources, do you know for how long that will last?
I want to make a suggestion. Using the MVP Assistant (run as administrator) with the Scheduler Manager installed, look at the Acronis Configuration to find an internal task for which the Scheduler Manager tab shows the ExecCmd ending with Bitdefender/check-update. This task is set to run every five minutes. You could disable this task. The method is to open Scheduler Manager and select the task. For example, if the task is 2-51 (as it is on my machine), you run the command task 2-51. Run get task to verify you have the right one. You will see in the Flags that it is ENABLED. Next run set enabled=off. This will disable the task. You can always set it back to enabled.
Another test is to set timeinterval=14400.It is initially set to 300 (seconds) so this will change it to run every 4 hours instead of every 5 minutes.
There is a second internal task which ends in NGMP/check-update which is set to run every three hours. You could disable that too.
Also, can you use the log viewer to check the various Agent.. logs to see if something is generating a lot of errors during the time the resources are being consumed.
Let's see what this does before anything else.
I do not recommend either deleting a scheduled task (better to just disable it), or deleting/renaming the updater.exe file. I know how to stop it, but before trying that it's better to try to find out why it is consuming resources.
I have solved the problem by renaming the updater.exe, since I have not activated the protection features.
I would be interested to know how this affects the logging. Can you monitor the growth of the log files to see if this is causing any increased logging. Check the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\CyberProtectHomeOffice\Logs folders. My experience is that when things are missing, ACPHO is not that happy about it. Logging is already rather excessive in my opinion.
I have not seen any significant changes.
