How to detect and prevent antivirus from affecting MATLAB and Simulink performance?

I suspect that my antivirus software is impacting the performance of MATLAB and Simulink. Is there something that I can do to detect this and to help prevent this type of interference? 

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Note: because antivirus is typically a Windows issue, this article is written only for Windows.

How to Detect Antivirus Interference

Some ways to see if antivirus might be creating the performance problems you observe in MATLAB and Simulink:

1. Open Resource Monitor or Task Manager and observe processes that show high CPU usage as you reproduce the slow behavior in MATLAB and Simulink. If you see the CPU usage of an antivirus program spike, that could be evidence of interference.
2. Start Windows in "Safe Mode with Networking". This will reduce any programs being run at startup, typically including antivirus. Open MATLAB, if the problem is fixed, then antivirus is likely to be a cause. 
3. If you still have trouble decerning if a slowdown is antivirus related, consider reaching out to MathWorks Technical Support.

How to Prevent Antivirus Interference

Most antivirus software has a concept of an "exclusion list" or something similar. If it is acceptable to you and your company's IT policies, it may help performance to add the following to the exclusion list:

1. The MATLAB executable (MATLAB.exe)
2. "MATLAB Root" folder.
3. The MATLABWebUI executable (MATLABWebUI.exe)

You can locate the "MATLAB Root" folder with the following command:

>>matlabroot

The MATLAB.exe executable is in the "bin" folder of the "MATLAB Root" folder. The MATLABWebUI.exe is in the "\bin\win64" folder of the "MATLAB Root" folder.

If you are unable to do this or if this does not have the desired effect, consider contacting your IT department or the antivirus software vendor for assistance.