Process Lasso can stop McAfee SecurityCenter's McSvHost from eating CPU

[Stephe]

Firefox has long had an issue with eating RAM, but now, McAfee
SecurityCenter's McSvHost.exe component is having issues.

Simply put, Firefox eats RAM, while McSvHost eats CPU.

On the McAfee forums, the moderators suggest turning off the Net
Guard feature in McAfee's firewall to address the problem of
McSvHost.exe misbehavior, and that works, but that is a dangerous
way to go about things.  For example, I use Juno for my e-mail
and Firefox for my browser.  Net guard is supposedly a component
of McAfee's Site Advisor, and it blocks risky connections in
Firefox on my PC about once a week, but it also blocks risky
connections in Juno on occasion.  For this reason alone, I will
not disable Net Guard.

I found that Process Lasso can deal with the McSvHost.exe problem
quite easily.  Politely terminate doesn't work (I was scared to
try Forcibly terminate, because there isn't any info on it in
Process Lasso's Documentation help files and it sounds too
drastic), but Restart Process does. This is probably the better
choice anyways, since McAfee often has legitimate reasons for
running McSvHost.  I don't want to disable McSvHost, I just want
it to stop eating CPU whenever it decides to do so.  Why it does,
I don't know, and neither, apparently, does anyone at McAfee --
yet, at least.

To stop McSvHost CPU overuse, choose the Active processes tab,
right-click on McSvHost.exe and select Restart process.  McSvHost
will then vanish from the Active process pane.  I guess that
means that McSvHost is now behaving properly, and that there was
no real constructive purpose for its having run for such a length
of time.

The McSvHost issue is now being discussed at the McAfee forums in
the following two threads:

McAfee Communities: McSvHost.exe causes cpu spike, lagging,...
https://community.mcafee.com/thread/38322

McAfee Communities: McSVHost.exe
https://community.mcafee.com/thread/46640

[Jeremy Collake]

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad your experiences are positive. I need to look into Politely terminate, and perhaps tone its boldness up some. In some cases, restarting a problematic process is indeed helpful. I can't speak for the specifics of your situation because I'd have to do some analysis of that software though. Ever since SiteAdvisor oopsie'd and rated my domain here red 4 times in a row (green, red, green, red, green, red, green ...) I haven't been much of use of it ;p. That said, they've done well the last year and kept a proper green rating, and even made me a 9/9 reviewer. The errant red ratings didn't even list a precise cause, no red files, no red links, no red reviews - just some old false positive causing a reputation problem on an ancillary service they use (apparently, never knew for sure). Anyway, like I said, they made amends, and may be under totally different management now, or use different algorithms or decision making processes.

[Stephe]

I need to look into Politely terminate, and perhaps tone its
boldness up some.

What does Forcibly terminate do that Politely terminate doesn't?

I am wrong in saying that there isn't any info on Politely
terminate nor Forcibly terminate in Process Lasso's
Documentation help files?  (Maybe I don't know where to
look.)

[edkiefer]

This is how I look at it . Politely terminating a app process is asking the process to close when its ready, this would be low priority command and process maybe be using or sharing data it needs to clean up before exiting .

Force terminating a process, doesn't ask ,doesn't wait for process but forces it to close, so it may close dirty (if it was doing something , it may lose data (depending on what process does ) . I never had issue with forcing a process as politely doing it hasn't work for me with processes I have tried .

I don't need to do or use this function so YMMV .

PS: I am no coder so see what Bitsum says 

[BenYeeHua]

I think that Politely terminate is just like clicking close button on it, and Forcibly terminate is just like you open Task Manager, and you end/kill process with it. 

[Jeremy Collake]

I think that Politely terminate is just like clicking close button on it, and Forcibly terminate is just like you open Task Manager, and you end/kill process with it. 

That is exactly what it tries to do. It clearly doesn't always work, and the larger question is whether it should fall-back to a forcible terminate in those cases, and how long it should wait before doing so.

[BenYeeHua]

That is exactly what it tries to do. It clearly doesn't always work, and the larger question is whether it should fall-back to a forcible terminate in those cases, and how long it should wait before doing so.

I think better not doing like that, if wanna do that, just like you shutdown a computer, asking user wanna kill it or not.
(Or let user set the timeout to kill it automatic, as user knowing what time is needed for the process to finish end itself)

When politely terminate a xxx.exe, wait for a few second, if the process still there, asking user wanna kill it or not, but with some information that the process is waiting for/doing what.(or kill it if user has set a timeout to kill it.)

"The xxx.exe is waiting to finish writing some file, are you sure you wanna to kill it?"
"The xxx.exe is frozen, are you sure you wanna to kill it?"

Just a suggestion. 

[Jeremy Collake]

Yes, I agree. It does duplicate Windows capabilities a bit, so I could maybe even defer to Windows to let it handle the closure the nice way, with user warning. We'll see. I'm building a new beta now, waiting for hopeful translation updates, then I'd like to issue a final, but have had plenty of little things to address in the interim.

[BenYeeHua]

Not a problem, I can wait 
And I only using that function 1-2 times per month.