Trend Micro Office Scan causing the System process to use excessive CPU

I had a server run low on disk space on one of the data volumes (a bit over 1 GB free on a 2 TB volume). When this happened, CPU utilisation went up to 100%. Task Manager showed System was the offending process. This is not the first this has happenedto us (although it’s the first time I’ve looked at it).

So, I ran Process Explorer on the server and took a look at the threads for the System process. Here’s what I saw:

It turns out TmXPFlt.sys is part of Trend Micro Office Scan’s virus scan engine. I tried unloading Office Scan but it made no difference. In the end I had to restart the server.

We install anti-virus to protect our servers, not to take them down.

It’s just not good enough!