Recommended file and folder exclusions for Microsoft Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 or Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection

Microsoft Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 and Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection scan the files and folders on your computer for malicious programs that are known as malware. By default, all files and folders are included when the programs scan your computer. However, you can configure Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 and System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection to skip certain files or folders when it scans the computer. It is best not to perform a malware scan on the files for certain programs or for operating system roles. This is to help prevent the following issues: 

• An anti-malware program could incorrectly determine that a program file is malware. This is known as a false positive.
• The anti-malware scan operation could decrease performance for a particular program when that program tries to access its program files.

This article contains links to articles and to Web sites that identify files and folders for certain Microsoft products. We recommend that you exclude these files and folders from Forefront Security and System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection scan operations. 

Note The information in this article also applies to other antivirus or anti-malware programs that you may use. Also, if you run an antivirus or anti-malware program on a computer that is running a third-party program or service, we recommend that you contact the program vendor. The program vendor can help determine whether certain files or folders should be excluded from antivirus or anti-malware scan operations.

The following sections contain information about the files and folders that we recommend be excluded from scanning by anti-malware programs. The information is categorized by the operating system role or by program name.

Domain controllers

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

Microsoft Exchange Server

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Forefront Endpoint Protection

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Internet Information Server (IIS)

Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS)

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 or Microsoft Virtual PC 2004

Windows operating systems

General information

For more information about Forefront Client Security policy-based exclusions, visit the following Microsoft Web site:For more information about how to use Forefront Client Security, see the Forefront Client Security product documentation. This documentation contains the following guides:

• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Getting Started Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Planning and Architecture Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Deployment Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Administrator's Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Performance and Scalability Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Disaster Recovery Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Security Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Troubleshooting Guide
• Microsoft Forefront Client Security Technical Reference Guide

To obtain this documentation, visit the following Microsoft Web site: