This support statement is provided by the Product Management Team.
Products like VirusScan Enterprise (VSE) and McAfee Agent (MA) do
not dictate the paging of physical memory (RAM). This function is handled by the Microsoft Memory Manager, which determines when memory should be paged to disk to free physical memory.
There is a scenario where memory can be migrated from virtual (paged) to physical (active) memory as a result of memory scanning by VSE. Scanning of memory can occur as a result of the
Processes on Enable setting for the On-Access Scanner or when you perform an On-Demand Scan of memory on running processes. If you are running applications that are sensitive to the allocation of physical memory, you may choose to disable these VSE features.
The product development team has assisted in the investigation of various system events that can lead to the supposition that McAfee has paged memory that was in use by non-McAfee tasks. While McAfee products do consume memory, they do not request the paging of physical memory. The consumption of physical memory is very dynamic; when physical memory resources become depleted, the Microsoft Memory Manager pages the contents of seldom-accessed physical memory to disk to free physical memory for use by more currently demanding tasks.
This behavior is described in depth in the following Microsoft article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918483
The consumption of physical memory is a result of the current product architecture. If you have a suggestion or design enhancement request to improve protection and performance. The product development team recommends that you submit a Product Enhancement Request.
If you require a change to product functionality, submit a new product idea at:
NOTE: The Ideas forum replaces the previous Product Enhancement Request system.
