Plex and Windows Defender (Network Realtime Inspection Service)

[Scott Bradley]

Some of you may be experiencing a similar problem and others may have a better solution, so I thought I would post it here.

I run a Plex server on my Windows 10 machine and I noticed when streaming through it my CPU was pegged at 100%. From time to time this would cause interruptions in the stream. Funny thing was, when streaming remotely from my friends Linux based Plex service it, the stream was rock solid.

I did some research and found that the CPU hog was the Network Realtime Inspection Service running against the stream. I put the PLEX executables in the Windows Defender Exclusions list (Settings->Update & Security->Windows Defender->Exclusions) and my CPU usage went down averaging about 10%.

Any thoughts or recommendations from the group?

 

[_Emi_]

disable defender? or get other antivirus? one of those free you an disable and they will not enable back after sometime.
it's like many hours for defender to enable again itself but still.

Defender likes checking things, sometimes too much, I haven't tested plex but someone posted how PhoenixFD improved drastically once defender was disabled. because it would try to check every file PhoenixFD creates so it slows it down.

I use Universal Media Center and never had problems, so maybe maybe it's plex causing it for something they use it on their server when streaming.

 

[Scott Bradley]

Yes, I disabled defender explicitly for Plex.

I hate all of the third party anti-virus tools with nag screens and up-selling. I use a combination of Windows Defender and MalwareBytes Anti-Exploit. Anti-Exploit is great for those zero day attacks. This combination is rock solid, doesn't (generally) weigh down my system and provides good protection.

This is the odd exception to that rule for me at least.

 

[An0mander]

Thanks Scott for the tip. I just recently installed flex server on my Win 10 PC and an streaming to my Xbox one. I'll check my defender settings and see how it looks.

I was getting issues with streaming in the first 5 seconds, but if I fast forward the rewound it worked just fine.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

[_Emi_]

Well looking at the process, I don't see it going above 0.1% so I don't know whyit happens on your side.
but there is always ways to disable it completely if needed.

REGEDIT:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender

create a DWORD value = DisableAntiSpyware
and
0 is on and 1 is off
then you can save the .reg with on and off so you enable it whenever you want and disable it just by double clicking on the regfile, which is easy to do.

I didn't see anything strange on that service, but installing plex server is not going to happen. but I hope if necessary like you will be streaming for long hours, disabling Defender would help without it having to turn back on.
This tip should be helpful for anyone anyway, if someone needs Defender to be off and not turning back on.