MSE significantly slows computer processing speed

Just quickly, this doesn't have any relation to the listed topics, and is related to system performance.

Over the past week, I have noticed that MSE has not automatically started, and notifies me that I should manually restart the service; when I do this it takes a few minutes to respond, and will usually return to normal. Yesterday however, I did the same several times, with no apparent response; after a few minutes each time, it would respond with an error message which I did not record, but more or less 'MSE was unable to start'. After these few attempts, I re-installed MSE, and there have been no apparent problems with starting the service since.

What is problematic however, is that during this time yesterday; my PC was running noticeably slower, with even the mouse lagging behind every few minutes. After I uninstalled MSE, I noticed that this issue did not recur; however after installing again the problem returned, because MSE was running a scan by default after installing, I assumed this was the cause. Today, my PC still has the same issues described above, that were present yesterday, before and after re-installing MSE.

I have spend some time reviewing similar cases, and have attempted suggestions such as removing the C:\windows\system32\dwm.exe process from the scanning range of MSE, as suggested here http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_scanning/msmpengexe-running-at-95-cpu-usage/4b079063-e93a-4e80-935b-c1d7ee02a672. This did have an apparent effect for a few minutes, however the problem persisted after another five minutes or so.

I am currently running Windows 7 Home Premiun 64 bit, SP1, with Intel Core i7 1.73GHz and 8Gb RAM.

I know that other issues suggested such as anti-virus conflict do not exist, as my hard drive was recently reformatted after a system failure, which I believe was related to software conflicts, or system corruption; and I do not believe that these issues are related as I have experienced no similar problems.

I am currently considering de-activating the real-time protection, and have limited it to incoming processes for the moment.

Thankyou for any assistance that can be provided.

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