Software Forum

I am using Microsoft Security Essentials and when doing a scheduled scan it seems to spend a large amount of time stuck on file "au.exe"
On an XP computer it increases the scan time by at least 15 minutes. Not quite as bad on my Win 7 machine, but still very noticeable that it spends a large amount of time on that file.
I have tried asking on the MSE forum, and also from Microsoft help, but about the only suggestion that works is to exclude that file from the scan, which is not really very good practice.
Anyone have any ideas why out of several hundred thousand files being scanned that au.exe should take so long to scan ?
(If I right click on the file and ask MSE to scan it then it almost instant on Win 7 and just a few seconds with XP machine.)

We checked it and it takes about 10 seconds or so to scan in both Windows XP/7 with MSE v1.0.1961.0 and latest updates, not 'a large amount of time' as you put it. :-\ It's probably because au.exe is a compressed exe file.

I think maybe there is some problem in that file. sometime any virus got stuck with these kind of files. so maybe antivirus unable to find any threat but check it hardly. so delete that file if it is not very necessary and then install that again.and also try to scan with any other antivirus.

good luck!!