You can increase the CPU priority of the protection plan scheduled task on a plan that is starved for system resources and has a longer than expected runtime. This will give the protection plan processes normal priority instead of below normal priority, the default.

  1. Download the attached zip file and expand it, noting the path to the expanded ps1 file.
  2. Open the ps1 file in notepad
  3. Change the -user and -password fields in line four of the script to reflect the correct domain username and password, with a space between the field and its value, e.g. -User mydomain\myuser -Password mypass
  4. Save the edited file. Copy the file to the computer running the plan.
  5. Run the powershell script on the computer that runs the plan.

a. To run the script, open powershell, then type the path and script name and hit enter, e.g. c:\scripts\settaskpriority.ps1

b. If the execution policy prevents the script from running, type set-executionpolicy remotesigned and hit enter. Then run the script.