I keep getting a little pop-up saying “Powershell has stopped working.” It goes on to say that Windows will close the program and notify me if a solution is found.
So I click on “close program” and ten minutes later it pops up again.
Is there an easy fix? Malware Bytes and AVG don’t seem to be helping.
Were you actually running / using powershell??
Take a look under Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Task Scheduler. See if you have anything that runs every 10 minutes.
yoyodyne: I had no idea I had so many processes automatically scheduled! But nothing on a ten-minute rotation.
HipGnosis: (I like your username!) No, it’s not something I’ve ever used or installed. I’m almost certain it was triggered by malware.
I ran Malwarebytes and AVG a few times, and the overt symptoms have gone away. I did see one other pop-up alert, saying that my security settings prevented downloading of a file. It looked awfully suspicious, but…for the moment…nothing seems to be happening.
Thank you for your help. (And dire curses on malware users. May they all get swine flu.)
I’ve been getting the same pop-up. I’m going to look in the Control Panel but may end up turning my computer into a paperweight.
That’s one solution… Another would be to have two computers: one for real business, and the other for surfing.
The trouble is that it all falls apart when a trusted friend sends me a picture of a cute kitten…with malware embedded. Sigh…
I had the same issue, pc was slow and i fixed it following the steps provided @ powershell has stopped working - It is caused by a malware called poweliks which is a sort of rootkit as per the forums i’ve read.
I got rid of it with Malwarebytes and AdwCleaner; I didn’t do the third step of using EsetPoweliksCleaner. I also didn’t go into safe mode, but I probably should have.
I have printed out and will keep the instructions you linked! Thank you!
In safe mode, it runs with limited options by disabling everything. If your PC is fast as before, then you’re clean.
Just to be clear, and for posterity: Powershell is not malware. In this case, Poweliks is the malware, and it executes in the Powershell environment.
Powershell is a command-line environment made by Microsoft, with the ability to execute software on the .NET platform. It’s available or included in all recent versions of Windows.
However, most casual users have no need for it, and very little software requires it. A home user will typically never see it.
Heracles: Thanks! I certainly didn’t know that.
Sort of like the difference between Java and a Trojan Horse compiled from Java?
(I couldn’t resist mentioning Troy to Heracles!) 