[smax013]

I don't believe you have yet answered my questions about the hard drive.

When this is happening, can you hear lots of activity from the hard drive?

Have you flushed the browser caches?

Defragged?

How full is the drive?

[SnyperTodd]

Hey ski, you're getting a lot of good advice here. One thing I haven't seen anybody have you try yet is to scan with Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. It's one of the best malware scanners out there, and it'll let you know if your problem is from malware. It finds things that other AV programs don't even look for. It's kind of like Spybot on steroids. I recommend you do a thorough scan with that, and see if it helps. It's quite obvious that your issue is not specifically browser related, but acts like malware that becomes active while any web browser is open, possibly being called up by a lot of activity on port 80(HTTP).

[coastie65]

Hey Snyper, OOPS. I thought of that the other day, but thought that base had been covered earlier ( I didn't check ). Also, I would suggest running www.SUPERantispyware.com as well. coastie

[SnyperTodd]

I just skimmed the whole thread and it was alluded to, but never fully checked out that I saw. IMO, that's probably the most likely cause, so it would be interesting to see the results.

[coastie65]

I agree. After everything else that has been checked, that's about all that is left is a possible malware infection. Should be interesting.

[Tech4me]

Probability ....Yes.......Could be infected in some svc that hogged the system down.....You CAN NOT run this and expect it to run fast ...... Regardless how big the HDD is...IMO.

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

I'd run a " Hijach this" ....: www.download.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html

[smax013]

Tech4me said:

Probability ....Yes.......Could be infected in some svc that hogged the system down.....You CAN NOT run this and expect it to run fast ...... Regardless how big the HDD is...IMO.


!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

1!

Quote

I'd run a " Hijach this" ....: www.download.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html

While I am not saying it is not some malware, you are neglecting the fact that at the top of that process list, it was showing FF as taking 94% of the CPU, not some svc. So, unless the malware is disguising itself as FF somehow (which could be possible...some malware is tricky stuff), it would not appear to be something like that at face value.

[SnyperTodd]

Malware can use any program that it wants to do it's dirty work. The fact that any web browser he uses maxes the processor, not just Firefox, maxes me think that it could be a piece of malware that is watching for activity on port 80 (such as surfing the web) and springing into action when it sees it.

[Tech4me]

"you are neglecting the fact that at the top of that process list" ....Just a sugestion......Cos , He said that He's already uninstalled FF .....?

Good luck Ski.

(Your in good hand with Xmas)

[smax013]

Tech4me said:

"you are neglecting the fact that at the top of that process list" ....Just a sugestion......Cos , He said that He's already uninstalled FF .....?


Good luck Ski.


(Your in good hand with Xmas)

But you were still using that SAME clipped graphic that had the 94% FF use contributing to the 100% CPU usage. If you were counting on the fact that he removed FF, then you should be referencing a new graphic (which I will admit has not been provided). You are trying to have your cake and eat it too.

The point was that when that graphic your where referencing was taken, the CPU usage was associated with FF, not some svc. Thus, it was either FF or some malware using FF/disguising itself as FF sucking up CPU...not some other svc. Now, that FF has been removed, either the CPU usage would drop (if FF was the problem) or something else would be sucking up the CPU.

[coastie65]

Another graphic would helpful for sure. smax, you are really getting into the swing of things. :D I am just sorta hit and miss with dealing with Andy and my advice has been rather poor. Good thing there is someone following up on things.

[smax013]

coastie65 said:

Another graphic would helpful for sure. smax, you are really getting into the swing of things. :D I am just sorta hit and miss with dealing with Andy and my advice has been rather poor. Good thing there is someone following up on things.

Ain't got much to do other than sleep, watch TV and be on the forum while I am recovering. :-)

[coastie65]

Good to have you back here. Guess I'll have to make the call to the Vet tomorrow. Andy hasn't got much left now.

[skicrazer]

Well, I've pretty much stripped it down to practically nuthin - even uninstalled my HP print drivers (recommended by a MS friend), but none of that has fixed it. It's gotten a little better, but from the screen print, you can see it still has issues (I have since reinstalled the HP stuff...needed it)



The first thing I did after I built the system 2 months ago (just the OS and apps, not the HW) and connected online was download and install AVG, ZoneAlarm, and SpyBot. If anything's on there, it got by them. Following the advice here, I have changed over to Avast! and SUPERantispyware and kept the ZA. I'm only using IE 7.0, and have uninstalled the other browsers, plus any other "extra sw" from the system. I've got the Canon suite of photo processing apps, so I guess I'll uninstall those. I'm still really curious about the 2363 missed entries from the uninstall of the Apple Mobile Device Support (I exited Revo because I needed to wait on the response about deleting all of the bold items after I had posted it here. Problem was that it had uninstalled the Apple product, so it won't show the registry entries anymore.). When I do a C: drive search on "apple", it does show quite a lot of files. I'm thinking I want to use a utility to extract and delete those, not just a straight delete (?).

I was going to post another task manager shot, but it's not allowing me to (is there a size limit per thread?). Anyway, actually, I was thinking the malware idea had validity, but performance has actually gotten better for the flash pages (i.e. the mammothmountain.com site's flash loads faster since I unloaded so much software), but overall, pages take longer to "paint" on the screen (while I watch the CPU Usage icon show all green). Does this sound like malware behavior?

Thanks again!



Oh yeah, and I do have plenty of disk space, but went ahead and defrag'ed anyway.
Message was edited by: skicrazer

[smax013]

Have you run SuperAntiSpyware in Safe Mode?

I would not worry about the Apple stuff right now...the odds that it is at the root of your problem is rather slim.

[SpiritWind]

:D Hi :



When it comes to using "Flash Player(s)" ( which I do not use ), it would be wise to

consider the Advise of Scott Dunn, who wrote the Article "Flash ads bearing malware

plague popular sites", available at WindowsSecrets.com/comp/080417 . IF I were to

use a Flash Player, I would seriously consider using his "part-time-Flash option", either

"TurnFlash" or "No!Flash" .

[skicrazer]

"Have you run SuperAntiSpyware in Safe Mode?" - no, and I haven't seen the safe mode option since I switched to XP. Maybe it boots too quickly, but I don't get the prompt to select safe or "normal" mode on startup. will reboot and see what I can find...



I ran the utility to verify current versions of the program and all were up to date. Interesting about the flash players, and disturbing. Seems everything uses flash. Should the AV and antispyware tools catch these malwares on a full system scan?



And, the logfile from the Hijackthis has some processes I'm not familiar with, AND the Apple apps I thought I had uninstalled! I guess they didn't uninstall since they were running when I tried to get rid of them (?). What's your opinion of Cyberdefender / MyIdentityDefender? I've got that on IE, but didn't have it on the other browsers.

[coastie65]

Hey ski, You won't se a prompt for safe mode. When the first screen comes up, you will get a prompt for Set up/ BioS/ Boot. At that point just start tapping the F8 key to get into Safe Mode. coastie65

[skicrazer]

OK, now that this has happened again, while I'm thinking about this message thread - 2 odd things that have been happening with this PC for a month or so now:



1. The clock (shown in the right hand icon tray) frequently looses 3 hours in the afternoon. Seems it is usually around 3pm (it just happened - I looked down at it and it said 12:06 instead the 3:06 is should have displayed), and I can just go change it back and it's good until it happens again. I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen every day.

2. Voice playback through the speakers has an echo-effect, but didn't when I first loaded the PC.



??

[coastie65]

The clock could be due to the CMOS battery going bad and needing changing. coastie