I’ve run AVG, Spybot S&D and AdAware. I found nothing. Using task manager, I see no suspicious processes and find that the CPU is nothing near full usage. Occasionally, a second or third copy of an application I’m running will start up. Once, when I’d pressed the keys a maximum of three times, forty copies of task manager all came on at once. Oh, I’m running Win XP.
Some malware renames itself to masquerade ass legitimate processes.
SuperAntiSpyware
MalwareByte’s AntiMalware
Microsoft Security Essentials
AdAware and Spybot are somewhat out of date.
You may need to boot into safe mode to install and/or run.
Have a look in the event log under system and application for any errors relating to application hangs, faulting applications or disk errors.
Find out what you have running. You could have a legit program that for some reason is taking up your RAM.
Go to the task bar (bottom of your screen) and right click
Then choose “task manager”
Then go to the “processes” tab (look toward the top of the task manager)
VERY IMPORTANT–> Look at the lower left and it will say something like “Show Processes from all users” Remember to click this, as if you don’t you won’t get everything that’s running
Then you can click on Memory (Private Working Set) and sort it from largest to smallest.
This will tell you what is running and what is taking up your memory.
Here is my recent experience. My laptop, running XP, was taking 10 minutes to boot. By that I mean the time it took for the disk to stop turning. I asked my dept sysop and he suspected a virus, but told me to bring it in. He installed a program that gives a snapshot of the boot process. It turns out that over the years (the computer is about six years old) I had installed a number of antivirus programs, nearly all from MS (or maybe MS had installed them using the automatic update feature) and they were all running, all looking over the disk and also interfering with each other. He will get rid of most of them. One that I tried hard to delete was the anti-virus program (I forget which) that came with the computer and had never upgraded (because we have a site licence for another one) but try as I might I could not expunge. He says he knows how to do that.
YMMV
A decent prog I use now and then is Ccleaner. It has a good ‘registry cleaner’ (imho) which helps get rid of useless registry entries (which slows start-ups noticeably) and other similar things. It also provides a listing of all the ‘start-up’ entries for your review.
Careful with adjusting/deleting things if you do not know what you are doing, of course, particularly with registry stuff (!).
Downloaded and ran SuperAntiSpyware. No help. On to Malwarebytes and Security Essentials.
I’ve been looking at Task Manager (actually I wanted to cut and paste the list of processes in my op, but it won’t let me). Firefox is taking up the most memory at present. Nothing else comes close.
I had a problem with Firefox slowing down my system. I downloaded Firefox Ultimate Optimizer, which now keeps Firefox down to about 1500 K of memory instead of >100,000 K which it had been. Upgrading Firefox to 3.6 helped a lot, too.
Difficult to diagnose from a distance and with your info but there are a few things that I have learned from XP experience.
- Most hangs or heavy slowdowns are hardware “based”, either from the hardware itself or from a faulty pilot (or service) trying to charge up. If you changed something, or updated a driver (or a program), try rolling back, or disactivating. Check the SYSTEM to see if something is not functioning for a start
- Another big hog is the way XP runs “NETWORK PLACES” and so on, I suppose you are linked by WiFi and possibly ethernet. check out if nothing is conflicting in there (try INTERNET EXPLORER diagnosis tools if they are activated) your whole system can block while W$ tries to resolve inexistant network adresses
- check any indexing programs you may have running (though this usually manifests itself through endless access to your HD) for some (like backup points for W$) are a bit delicate to desactivate, especially if your machine is running a problem, but others like BING search, PICASA, GOOGLE desktop search can bug up, temporarily disactivate them as you can.
-Check your STARTUP folder, if you have some savvy check the bootup or use a startup check tool (don’t buy one, it’s not worth it, just post back) - are you using an external USB drive?, your anti virus may not appreciate that too much, try seperating scans (again if this is the prob, you will hear the clicking)
This is a good link for seeing the guts of your system, and eventually updating any drivers, but it is in FRENCH http://www.touslesdrivers.com/
I should have said first, defrag ang check your disks, takes time but its worth it, I usually run a memtest (6-8hrs) too but I don’t think your slowdown comes from there. Blow out the dust everywhere you can (open the battery casing to blow through there)
Malwarebytes found nothing.
SuperAntiSpyware found nothing.
Microsoft Security Essentials demands that I update it before I can scan. So far, attempts to update have been 30-60 minutes of downloading files ending in ‘update failed’.
I don’t think I mentioned this, but Jade Empire still runs with almost no problems. There are occasional brief hangs (maximum 30 seconds). But that’s it. If I try to run Yahoo Messenger, Firefox, or pretty much anything else my system is glacial. But a graphics and ram intensive game runs just fine.
cplif I’m not connected to any wifi network. I don’t have any USB drives hooked up.
Have you had a look in your event log yet?
I’m having the same problem with Firefox. Tried to download this, ended up with a Trojan that AVG caught, luckily.
Anyone have a safe link?
If you open task manager, show all processes. Then hit the “print screen” key on your keyboard, open MS paint and go to edit, then paste. Save this file to your desktop and upload it to tinypic.com. Post the link here. (remember and hide any personal information which might be on your picture)
This will let us see your processes and diagnose better.
Wow. I’m running so many I’m having to do it in three screenshots. I’m embarrassed.
Number 1
Number 2
Number 3. In this one, from “System Idle P” down is what’s not included in the second screen shot.
I know that has to be way too many processes. I just don’t know enough about computers to know which ones I don’t need.
You’re running on a laptop, aren’t you? How hot is it getting? Many Intel mobile CPUs will throttle back when they get too hot.
Yowza you have a lot going on there!!
By way of a comparison my Win7 laptop has 32 processes running compared to your 81.
In terms of browsers I would recommend you switch over to using Google Chrome, it is the fastest browser I have ever used and makes Firefox look old and slow by comparison.
In order to sort out the rest of the junk on our system you have 2 options. You can either do a manufacturer’s system restore to wipe your laptop back to day1 condition or you can try clean up without doing a reinstall.
If you choose the manufacturer’s restore make sure you back up all your work first, some restores will backup your work for you but it’s always wise to keep your own copy in case something goes awry.
To deal with the issue without doing a restore I would advise the following:
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Run through ‘Programs and Features’ and uninstall any software you don’t use, if you aren’t sure what a piece of software does just Google it and it should be clear if it is required or not, if in doubt you can ask here. You should remove all bar 1 anti-virus application, having multiple AV scanners installed at once can cause more problems than it solves, if you use a good scanner with real-time protection like Avira’s Free AV you don’t need anything else.
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Once you have cleared away junk programs you need to run through and stop programs running on startup that don’t need to be, there are lots of applications that assist with this but they aren’t needed. Just load up msconfig, go to the startup tab and start unticking boxes. You basically only need your AV to load on startup and anything you untick can always be ticked back on later so don’t worry about messing something up. Untick them all apart from the AV processes.
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You should now have far fewer processes running on startup, you can further chop things down by using the services tab in msconfig, tick to hide MS services to avoid switching something important off by mistake. Most of these can safely be switched off, just make sure to leave any AV services set to run and the iTunes services if you use an iPod (it throws a fit if you switch them off and try to sync anything).
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Run a cleanup program like CCleaner to remove all temporary files and clean up your registry.
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Run disk defrag to tidy up the disk after removing so many files.
That should give you a good start towards a healthier PC!
One thing I just thought of… Do you have numerous ‘helper toolbars’ installed in your browser? Things like Ask.com’s search-bar or AVG’s toolbar or similar? Those things can really put a drag on browser performance, ime, especially the AVG one (linkchecker?? forget the name)
It is not infrequent that installing some program will also place a new toolbar within your browser if you do not catch the box to uncheck/decline during the install.
You might need to update the driver on your videocard. My computer has been slow and hanging up for a few days, but it wasn’t until I got the blue screen of death this morning telling me that there was a driver problem that I thought to see if there was an updated driver. Turns out the last one was released three weeks ago. The computer is running much better now.
typing on my phone making it hard to provide links and such but the msse refusing to update I think it going to point at the big problem. Google the error code. I have seen several scenarios including the high ram use svchost that turned out to be a tdss rootkit that malwarebytes and several others were missing but the tdss rootkit tool from kaspersky killed it in one shot.
I would love to get my hands on your startup task launcher and a hijack this log
Where do I find that again?
And how do I test my ram?