Topic awaiting preservation: CPU usage at 100% (Page 1 of 1)

I helped my brother re-format and load a clean install of winXP on his computer just this last month. He called me saying his FlashMX is acting funny. Strange things like if he creates a folder in the library he can not put anything in it, it's just there. Anyways, I didn't believe him so I went over to look at it and sure enough it's acting kinda kooky. Because we just barely re-loaded everything I couldn't think why it would be acting funny. I opened the task manager and his CPU usage is maxed at 100%... I tried a few other programs and the same thing. I can open any program on his computer (one at a time), let it sit idle, and his CPU is maxed out. I know there are no viruses or spyware. Why would it be doing this? Thanks for any help. Peace.

1393

XP problems. Hmm........ I know just the fix for this one:

Improve Computer Performance & Stability

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[...]I know there are no viruses or spyware.[...]

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so,how do you know that? Is there a processe visible in task manager that's eating all that cpu time?
That should be your first start... if that doesn't find anything, the tools from www.sysinternals.com
might help you diagnose what it is that's eating up all cpu time.

Yep, it looks like virus, worm or the like to me.

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so, how do you know that?

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Well, I guess I can't say I know for sure, but I updated his norton antivirus and scanned and I downloaded spybot and scanned. Both came out clean.

quote:

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Is there a processe visible in task manager that's eating all that cpu time?

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I'll have to check that this weekend... (duh) I just assumed it was whatever program was open because it only ran at 100% when a program was running. :P

1393

Some people are finding it takes mpore then just one program to remove all of the spware on one PC.
Adaware, Spybot S&D and CWShredder may need to all be used to get the spyware.

See this link for more.

__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

[This message has been edited by tj333 (edited 04-10-2004).]

I couldn't agree more with you tj.
My wife's computer, some time ago, was so infected with this crap that the way I did to get rid of ALL of them was manually. By using the task manager, you can see ALL the processes going on in your computer. Then, I studied all of them, one by one, where does this file come from, who did it, googled it, and searched for all evidences of it in the registry, deleting everything that was suspicious (I had a backup, in case things got worse).
Fortunately, after doing a lot of manual work in the registry, system32 and other places, I was able to reboot the computer and see that it was clean. I used all the available online scanners to be sure and, most importantly, I knew almost very well all about all processes going on in the background of the computer.
It's a lot of work, but it worked.