Virus? or maybe Spyware? What.... I'm helpless

[Paper Carnival]

Hey all,

My computer is now officially stupid. Every once in a while it locks up in a very ugly way. Investigating it I found out that the CPU becomes 100% or close. It's like, I might just sit and stare the monitor without any big cpu-consuming programs and see CPU - just magically - fly to 100%

I can't system restore, by the way... I haven't tried, but I don't want to for a lot of different reasons

From all the scans I performed so far, my computer is virus-free and spyware-free. But I don't get it, what is it that causes the slowdown? By observing task manager, System Idle Process is what takes all the CPU. I downloaded Security Task Manager and it doesn't show anything suspicious going on. Neither does it show any process using that much of CPU, yet task manager shows there's a 100% cpu usage.

I'm not really a tech person, but I'm confused as to what might be going on. I last defragmented my drive sometime near the Ice Age, maybe that could be the problem?

[BOYD1981]

you don't have skype running do you?

[Paper Carnival]

Nope. I stopped a lot of useless processes from starting, but the problem still exists. All the processes I have now have been running for months before problems appeared anyway

[ManicMatt]

At first I thought of the problem I was having, where if my bluetooth adaptor lost a connection halfway through transfering something, the btstackserver would use up all my cpu.

System Idle Process is what takes all the CPU.

Until I see this. The idle process is just showing you the cpu memory that isn't in use. It's perfectly normal. So I begin to suspect your computer has some different kind of problem going on.

It's hard to say without literally checking out your computer myself. Even then I'm no tech head myself!

[Barbarian]

Install any new software lately? Maybe there's something running in the background that is eating up the system resources.

A quick way to see what programs are starting automatically when you boot-up your computer, click on "Start" then "Run" then enter in the following command: msconfig

From the System Configeration utility that pops up, click on the "Startup" tab. There you will see a "Checkmark" next to all of the applications / programs that automatically load themselves in when your computer starts up. Keep checked the progams or apps that you know are important or that you want starting up by themselves. If something seems odd, or if it's something you don't want starting up by itself, then Un-Check it then "Okay".Ã,  If you don't know what something it, it still might be a system thing which is okay, but, if it's something "unknown" to what it is, let us know here what it is, and we may be able to tell you if it's okay to allow to have starting up, or if it's okay to Un-Check.Ã,  Or you might compare it against a list of a lot of known programs and/or processes that like to start themselves up by checking and comparing it at the following site:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
Ã,  If you do make any changes to the Startup list, you'll need to re-boot the computer before those changes will take effect. Upon reboot you'll get a message saying something to the effect that "Hey, you made some changes to the startup.. blah blah blah", just "Check" and "Ok" that message.

ALso, there's a lot of useful utilities at the following link:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Ã,  Ã, I suggest to download and run the "HijackThis" program, then post-up the results of running that program and I will probably be able to tell you if there's any "Bad" programs that are running themselves on your system, then you could use the "HijackThis" program to remove the Bad items.

Ã,  Ã, Some of the other utilities on that site are very useful too.Ã,  Of course before making any important changes to your system, it's wise to make a new System Restore checkpoint and/or backup your registry.

Ã,  Ã, A couple of other things to check that may help. Insure that the "Allow Indexing Service..." to your hard-drives is disabled / turned-off.Ã,  If it's on, sometimes that eats up a lot of system resources, causes major slowdowns sometimes, and basically it's a big waste of time.Ã,  One way to check this is double-click on your "My Computer" icon, then from your hard-drive(s), example, your "c:" drive, right-click on it then select "Properties", then from the "Generals" tab, towards the bottom you may see something that reads like "Allow Indexing service..."Ã,  If it's check, then I suggest to "Un-Check" it and "OK".Ã,  It may take a few minutes for the computer to adjust the new settings, but this is normal.

Ã,  Ã,  And, I forgot to ask what anti-virus program you are using. Some anti-viruses programs, such as "Norton's", I find are huge system resouce and memory-hogs and bog down a system, especially the longer it's been on. If you're running an AV like Norton's and you think that may be part of the case of the problem, you might consider using a different AV program that takes up much less memory and resources. The AV program I use is called "AntiVir", and there's a totally free version that can be downloaded at: www.free-av.comÃ,  , and it works great, and you hardly know it's running as it doesn't take up much memory or resources, especially compared to something like "Norton's".

Ã,  Ã, Also, if you havne't done it in a while, you might consider doing a Disk Defrag (You might need to do that from Safe Mode). And, perhaps clean up the registry using a Registry Cleaner program. If you're running Windows XP, a good free utility for helping to clean the Registry is RegScrubXP, check it out over at:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2048

Good luck.

[Paper Carnival]

Problem seems to be fixed

I installed Anti-Vir and removed my outdated version of Mc Affee (which did cause some slowdown) and found about 5 viruses, heh. I did a few more stuff with different utilities there and there and my computer got a lot faste (but the lockup would still happen) I used RegScrubXP and cleared a lot of stuff (around 160) and also deleted a lot of files I didn't need anymore. The random lock up doesn't happen anymore

So glory be to you, Barbarian

[Squinky]

Now ease off on the porn a little?

[Barbarian]

Hey Guybrush, good to know you've got your 'puter working good again.
Glad to know I was of some help to you.Ã,  If you still have any more problems, let me know and I may be able to make some more suggestions.Ã,  Ã, Did you have a chance to run the "HijackThis" program? There still might be some "baddies" lurking on your system you don't know about.Ã,  Also, you might want to do a full scan for Spyware junk too. A good free utility for this is Ad-Aware , as well as SpyBot Search & Destroy.Ã,  I like the "Tea-Timer" option that you can activate in the SpyBot program, as it protects "real-time" against programs trying to make important changes to the registry, and it will notify you of such attempt (in some cases it may be okay to allow some changes, for example, if you're willingly installing a new software that you know is okay in which you want to allow it to start-up automatically).

For furthur protection against Spyware junk, I might suggest getting SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard over at: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html

And Squinky: Teh Pr0n, is that what happened to yer eye? It went blind from watching too much of it? Heheh.

Ã,  Ã, Okay, now back to some good 'ol Adventuring!Ã, 

[Paper Carnival]

Now ease off on the porn a little?

Hehe it wasn't pr0n that ruined my pee-sea, it's because I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I'm a mighty pirate

I already have Ad-Aware and Spybot and I check them regularly. The problem was the Anti-Virus, I didn't know of a free good one (I hate AVG) and McAffee expired some time ago.

I also have Security Task Manager which allows me to see even camouflaged processes, I quaranteened everything I didn't need and used google to find out what everything is about. So I think as far as processes go I'm safe, would Hijack This! do anything more?

By the way, does anyone know of a good free firewall that has free updates?

[Squinky]

Zone alarm?

[Haddas]

I'm gonna suggest a program called NOD32. You can get the trial, and use it for 30 days. It's a small program, but a VERY VEY good AV program

[Grapefruitologist]

I don't know, but something similiar happened to me once.
My old computer had lots of problems with it, but the major problem was that there was NO MB on it, and whenever I deleted something, the freed up MB would quickly disappear for no reason, back to 0 MB. Eventually I had to get a new computer.

[Barbarian]

ZoneAlarm's ok, but I found it's a bit "un-stable" and clumsy at times.
I now use Sygate Personal Firewall (free version), I like it better than ZA, and it works great for me. You can find more info and a free download over at:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160

Regarding "HijackThis". Well, it's a great little utility for finding out what kind of stuff is running on your system and good for rooting out any "nasties" that like to hide themselves.Ã,  But, it's not really "antivirus" or "anitispyware", rather it gives you a list of programs / apps, etc.. that is installed and/or running on your system, and from the readout you can figure out what might be okay and what might be bad. It also gives the option to remove items that you think are bad or causing problems.Ã,  It requires a bit of advanced computer-tech type of knowledge though, and you shouldn't remove any items if you're not sure what it is or not sure what you're doing.

[monkey0506]

I have the best AntiVirus in the world.

Wanna know what it is?

It's Ctrl+Alt+PowerButton.  Blocks every known virus, spyware, hacker, spam, popup, user...

Actually today I had fun fixing my grandmother's computer.  Formatted the hard-drive, reinstalled Windows (funny thing...the box says Upgrade version but the disk says full Academic edition...o.0), then I got to remember the thing I always forget when formatting hard drives...the drivers.  Fortunately I was able to find drivers that worked (not the right ones, but ones that served the same functionality).  The only thing I wasn't able to restore...well...things...was her Norton AntiVirus and...Microsoft Office...but Office should be coming back tomorrow and I got her some random AV prog off google!

[Paper Carnival]

Yeah, I forgot to say "except Zone Alarm" Sygate seems great, thanks again!

Grape: Well, if it really couldn't be fixed you could have just formatted your hard drive...

[SSH]

Avast is another free AV prog: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html