M-Files and Virus Scanning

M-Files is compatible with all commonly used virus scanning products.

It is, however, important to ensure that the virus scanners on the end users' computers do not perform scheduled scanning for the virtual M-Files drive (the M: drive by default). A scheduled scan for the M-Files drive would load all the content from the M-Files server to the user's client and unnecessarily strain both the network and the server.

Additionally, for best performance, you may wish to disable any real-time scanning for the virtual M-Files drive (the M: drive by default) and the M-Files installation folder ("C:\Program Files\M-Files" by default). Excluding these locations from real-time scans can help prevent unnecessary system load and possible conflicts between M-Files and the anti-virus software.

Excluding the M-Files drive and installation folder from virus scanning

To exclude the M-Files drive and the installation folder from virus scanning, you should add their paths to the appropriate exclusion lists or exceptions lists in the anti-virus software. For example with Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM), this would be done via an exceptions policy as described in the Symantec knowledge base article Create Centralized Exceptions Policies in Endpoint Protection Manager 12.1 . Other commonly used anti-virus software products may use terminology such as "excluded items list", "exclude objects", or "exclude from scanning".

There are typically separate exclusion lists for scheduled scanning and real-time scanning.

Excluding the M-Files Client process from virus scanning

If your anti-virus software supports excluding processes by name, it is usually a good idea to exclude the MFClient.exe process from any real-time scanning. By default, the path to MFClient.exe is "C:\Program Files\M-Files\<version>\Bin\x64\MFClient.exe" on 64-bit systems and "C:\Program Files\M-Files\<version>\Bin\x86\MFClient.exe" on 32-bit systems. With SEPM, for instance, this can be done by following the instructions in the Symantec knowledge base article How to create an application exception in the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager .

Excluding the MFClient.exe process from real-time scanning can help improve performance by preventing the virus scanner from scanning the same files twice: once when the application opens the file and another time when MFClient.exe performs an internal open operation on the same file.