Virus or Spyware?
Moderator: Wiz Feinberg
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Mike Brinkmeyer
- Posts: 341
- Joined: 23 Feb 2001 1:01 am
- Location: Houston, Texas
Virus or Spyware?
Well our new 3 week old computer already has become sluggish to the point of it eventually freezing up. When I check the "Processes" under the Windows Task Manager, it indicates 60 - 70 processes running with 100% CPU usage. Most of these processes are .exe applications. I don't know which processes out of the 70 should be legitimately running.The computer came with Norton anti-virus installed but I haven't done the live update everyday. Any advice on clearing this mess up?
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Don Poland
- Posts: 1196
- Joined: 31 Dec 2004 1:01 am
- Location: Hanover, PA.
Mike,
Check out this website. http://www.processlibrary.com/
It will let you search for processes via name and describe what they are. This may help with the process of eliminating those that are unnecessary. Good luck
Check out this website. http://www.processlibrary.com/
It will let you search for processes via name and describe what they are. This may help with the process of eliminating those that are unnecessary. Good luck
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Jack Stoner
- Posts: 22123
- Joined: 3 Dec 1999 1:01 am
- Location: Kansas City, MO
I have 58 processes running, but none are using much memory. The 70 may be a little high, but the big issue is those that are running at 100% (and is it 100% all the time?).
Taming a PC, from the startup, to what is in the Sys Tray, to processes can be a daunting task. If it's a new Dell, there is a freeware program "decrapifier" that can be found using a google search that will "clean" the PC of a lot of the trialware, etc that Dell puts on new PC's. Other PC vendors do the same thing but I don't know if someone has written a program to zap all the junk.
One thing you need to do, before doing any "tweaking" is to manually create a "System Restore" point. That way if something critical or need is deleted you can, in most cases, get it back. Another option, if you have an external hard drive is to use a "ghost" program such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image (what I use) to do a complete backup of the hard drive (including any vendor installed recovery and/or diagnostic partitions). Actually the external (USB Connected) hard drive full backup should really be high priority item and then regular backups done - and it's not "if" there is a hard drive crash or a corruption of programs or hard drive, but for "when".
Taming a PC, from the startup, to what is in the Sys Tray, to processes can be a daunting task. If it's a new Dell, there is a freeware program "decrapifier" that can be found using a google search that will "clean" the PC of a lot of the trialware, etc that Dell puts on new PC's. Other PC vendors do the same thing but I don't know if someone has written a program to zap all the junk.
One thing you need to do, before doing any "tweaking" is to manually create a "System Restore" point. That way if something critical or need is deleted you can, in most cases, get it back. Another option, if you have an external hard drive is to use a "ghost" program such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image (what I use) to do a complete backup of the hard drive (including any vendor installed recovery and/or diagnostic partitions). Actually the external (USB Connected) hard drive full backup should really be high priority item and then regular backups done - and it's not "if" there is a hard drive crash or a corruption of programs or hard drive, but for "when".
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Mike Brinkmeyer
- Posts: 341
- Joined: 23 Feb 2001 1:01 am
- Location: Houston, Texas
Thanks Don and Jack for your help and good advice. I will check into all the processes running and try to identify those that need to be there and those that don't (and yes Jack, my new computer is a Dell). For the time being, I do believe I have found the culprit with the help of my ISP's customer support. It seems there was some EZI_HMZ.exe spyware running (I can't recall exactly what that is but I do the remember the HM stands for "home management". Bad stuff - it was using nearly all my memory. Now that I ended the process, my CPU usage hovers between 0 and 4% - much, much better. There are, however, about 60 processes that are still running and that seems like a lot - I'm hoping "processlibrary" and "decrapifier" will help me out there. I'm surprised that my spyware programs (Adaware & Norton) didn't identify my problem. Thanks again for your help.