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It’s a much better bet to exclude a particular folder that you know is safe, like your virtual machine folders. When you exclude a filename or file extension, you are telling your antivirus software to completely ignore those files anywhere on your system, which could cause a security problem. You can use this data to figure out which applications are constantly reading and writing to the hard drive, and then based on the safety of those files, you can choose whether or not to exclude them.ĭon’t Exclude File Types, Exclude Folders At this point you’ll see loads and loads of items in the list, with every access to the file system. Just open up Process Monitor, and then “uncheck” all of the little icons on the right-hand side of the toolbar, leaving only the “Show File System Activity” one checked. There’s a nearly infinite number of applications and scenarios for everybody’s PC, so it’s hard to say exactly what is going to work on your PC-but there’s a way you can figure it out for yourself using Process Monitor, the great tool from Sysinternals at Microsoft.
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Windows Update Folders: This actually comes straight out of a Microsoft KB article-you’ll notice that they don’t recommend it, because they can’t do that in case somebody writes a special virus for the purpose of suing them, but the same principle applies.If you’ve ripped your own CDs or downloaded from somewhere legitimate like Amazon, then you can safely exclude your music folder. Legitimate Music Folders: If you’re downloading music from shady sources, this does not apply.Personal Photo/Video Folders: Got you have a massive library of photos or videos that you’ve taken with your digital camera? As long as you only use this location for files copied from your SD card, there’s no reason to be scanning it and slowing your PC down while doing photo editing.Subversion / TortoiseSVN Folders: Have you ever tried to do a big checkout of a source control project and had it fail? There’s a good chance that it’s conflicting with your antivirus application.This is actually what prompted this article, and probably the only significant performance boost out of the things we’re mentioning.
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Virtual Machine Directories: If you’re using VMware or VirtualBox, you should make sure those locations are excluded.
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Here’s a few examples of some things you may consider excluding: The general idea is that if you have some applications that are writing to the hard drive constantly, you should probably exclude the folders they are writing or reading from, as long as those applications are trusted and safe.įor example, if you’re using a virtual machine, which does both reads and writes from the hard drive on a fairly constant basis, you should make sure your antivirus application is not scanning those files and folders.
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