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philippwree's avatar
philippwree
Copper Contributor
Jul 09, 2020

Limit Windows Defender CPU Usage

I have the problem that our Clients use too much CPU during a FullScan. Actually, the usage is limited to 20%, but the setting seems to have no effect. Whether I set it via Configuration Manager or G...
Salbert89's avatar
Salbert89
Copper Contributor
Apr 13, 2021

AJP123 

Hey,

based on the docs article for Set-MpPreference, its not a hard limit, see text below.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/defender/set-mppreference?view=windowsserver2019-ps&viewFallbackFrom=win10-ps

 

-ScanAvgCPULoadFactor

Specifies the maximum percentage CPU usage for a scan. The acceptable values for this parameter are: integers from 5 through 100, and the value 0, which disables CPU throttling. Windows Defender does not exceed the percentage of CPU usage that you specify. The default value is 50.

Note: This is not a hard limit but rather a guidance for the scanning engine to not exceed this maximum on average.

AJP_UK's avatar
AJP_UK
Brass Contributor
Apr 13, 2021

Salbert89 Thanks, yes. There were two microsoft docs related to this setting. One said it was a hard limit and one said it was not. I contributed to both docs about the difference and they changed the one that said it was a hard limit to say it wasn't.

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