Elisa Yritystietoturva_F-secure plugin hosting service high CPU usage (continued)

MVAR

Hi,

Opened today my work laptop. CPU usage 100%. F-Secure plugin hosting service ate all my CPU power. Waited for a minute, then had to act.

Tried to stop the service to get to use my laptop -> unsuccessful

Disabled Firefox and Chrome browser extensions -> worked

Checked the Scan Settings as you mentioned in a closed post from January (https://community.f-secure.com/en/discussion/124249/f-secure-plugin-hosting-service-high-cpu-usage). I have no scheduled scans, so nothing to set to low priority.

F-Secure should work *by default* on low priority on all it's tasks! My work laptop needs to stay usable immediately when I open the lid and join the meetings! No discussion about it.

Please advice:

What settings do I need to do to prevent F-Secure from blocking my work? Or should I uninstall it?

Firmy

Hello @MVAR

Thank you for your reply.

Kindly contact Elisa to assist you on this matter https://yrityksille.elisa.fi/yhteystiedot

Thank you and have a good day.

Ukko

Hello,

Sorry for my reply. I am only an F-Secure user.

Opened today my work laptop. CPU usage 100%. F-Secure plugin hosting service ate all my CPU power. Waited for a minute, then had to act.

Tried to stop the service to get to use my laptop -> unsuccessful

Disabled Firefox and Chrome browser extensions -> worked

You can try to create an fsdiag file (or if the situation reoccurs, then at this moment / soon after) - and (or) contact F-Secure Support via the official channel (for example, web-chat).

• How do I create an FSDIAG file? - F-Secure Community
• Contact support | F-Secure

There can be many reasons for this (or similar) problem (or not a problem). Thus, by contacting Support, they will be able to analyze exactly your situation directly and transfer information to those responsible or offer a solution.

But if just trying to discuss this topic, then it would be great to know more things. Let's say:

• my system with F-Secure SAFE installed (beta build) on current minute has six processes called "F-Secure plugin hosting service", maybe only three or four are F-Secure SAFE (and not other F-Secure solutions). Each with its own task and for its own purpose. So, good to know which one was in your situation.
• then "CPU usage 100%" - how much did it affect the perception of system responsiveness? Was the system completely unusable?

F-Secure should work *by default* on low priority on all it's tasks! My work laptop needs to stay usable immediately when I open the lid and join the meetings! No discussion about it.

I think, this is so. The F-Secure solution functions as light and efficiently as possible. But there is always a way to improve the possibilities scores. :) So I think it's designed so that the system is ready to use right after booting up.

But about """on low priority on all it's tasks""" - if you will always scan (like the described example with manual 'scheduled' scanning) in Low priority mode, it can take a very long time. And depending on the number of files and their types - also unpredictably long. For example, not in low priority mode - one of my systems is fully scanned for about 24 hours. However, I barely noticed any F-Secure interruptions in daily use (due to real-time autoscan, DeepGuard, or some underlying features). So I consider F-Secure SAFE as "light" by default.

What settings do I need to do to prevent F-Secure from blocking my work? Or should I uninstall it?

If the protection that appears when using F-Secure SAFE is not required, then you can uninstall it. Though I don't see any reason to do so, because there is an opportunity to try to solve or improve the problematic areas (that have been encountered).

And also need to understand how F-Secure SAFE blocking your work. I mean, CPU 100% with unusable system state. Is it so?

I suspect that it is possible with the system startup - various activities can occur (updating programs in the background, scheduled system tasks, launching applications, and so on). In addition to responding to all this in the file system, F-Secure SAFE should also monitor some network activity (network requests and the like).

It is possible that "something" with heavy CPU usage while "interacting" with the F-Secure plugin hosting service is transferring this load. Which is displayed as "CPU 100%" by F-Secure service. Thus, there may not be some option that causes F-Secure to do something resource-intensive. But there is some third-party application, activity or "routine" that creates this load. The F-Secure process/service becomes a member of which.

As such - when the system is first booted - F-Secure SAFE can check and update AV databases and other modules. Sometimes it may take more than a minute. Although this should not "hang" the system anyway.

it turns out that.. need to know more specific information about your system configuration, an impact view, situation's background - so to advise whether it is possible to disable some setting in F-Secure or is there some other solution to the problem. Or if "this is how it should be", then find a way to improve.

Sorry for my English / discussion.

Thanks!

Firmy

Hi @MVAR

Welcome to the F-Secure Community page. Thank you for your post.

May I know which F-Secure product are you running on your laptop? And which version is it using? What operating system are you running? Have you checked for the latest updates if there are any?

High usage of CPU can be caused by many reasons. Some of it can be caused by a bad hard disk or the app is not properly updated. You may use the uninstall tool to reinstall the app for a clean reinstallation to remove any issue with the previous installation Support tools | F-Secure

You may check these links for more troubleshooting steps to help you:

Ardunio-IDE stop F-Secure plugin hosting service to use 50% CPU-load — F-Secure Community

High CPU Load — F-Secure Community

F-Secure plugin hosting service using mass amounts of CPU when I use Microsoft Edge — F-Secure Community

F-secure hoarding processes — F-Secure Community

However, kindly share a screenshot of your task manager if the issue remains.

And as @Ukko mentioned, it is good for us to take a look at the FSDIAG for more information.

Thank you and have a good day.

MVAR

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

I'm using Elisa Yritystietoturva v18.5 on Windows 10.

I can try take a Task Manager screenshot and the FSDIAG info the next time this occurs.

As to my question: Is there any settings I can turn on/off to prevent this?

Read quickly few of those suggested troubleshooting links: uninstalling apps or clearing Firefox cache is not an option - F-Secure should not require users to do so.

MVAR

Yes, Elisa will help me on this matter, I'm sure ;)

Elisa Yritysturva is effectively an F-Secure product. Says so in the label. It has F-Secure logo with it.

Nice redirection of the problem.

Ukko

Hello,

I can try take a Task Manager screenshot and the FSDIAG info the next time this occurs.

It is likely the created Fsdiag may still have some information about past event (if logs are not re-written by further days).

As for their redirection to Elisa, I think there might be legal troubles here. Maybe they have agreements and policies. And, probably, F-Secure simply cannot take "your data" for analysis, since formally you are a client (so to speak) of another provider. Or something like that. I think you could get the idea.

Whereas if you contact Elisa support - and if they can't provide it. And it will be necessary to escalate case to F-Secure, then this will be done according to regulated steps and channels.

Although you can still try to contact the official F-Secure support directly - if you can find a more precise cause of the problem or steps to reproduce. At the very least, you can just report a specific problem without being tied to the fact that this is a branded version of F-Secure SAFE (especially if it can be reproduced here).

As to my question: Is there any settings I can turn on/off to prevent this?

I don't think anything needs to be changed. Just use the functionality you need. None of the options should lead to such "strong" problems. Your situation could be a one-off event (or related to some other software activity, and the F-Secure solution was just doing its job of checking for oddities).

Considering that this is a branded solution, in principle, some known bugs could already be fixed with the stable release of F-Secure SAFE. In this case, you can ask Elisa if they provide you with the latest build available.

It will be great if your problem can be solved successfully. And it will also become clear (fixed) the reason for the described CPU usage.

Thanks!