Explorer.exe spiking and High Page Faults

[Patrick Cohan]

*** Repost *** Is this the correct group for this question? *** Thank You
***

I have W2K running on a users system and he is experiencing a very unique
problem. Two seperate applications: Lotus 123 v9 and ACT! v6 (e-mail
client). In Lotus 123, when he types directly in the 'Formula Bar', the
characters slowly appear and Explorer.exe CPU usage jumps from 1% to 60-85%
depending upon how many typed characters are waiting to appear and the Page
Faults increase by 3500 to 4000 per second until the CPU usage drops. These
symptoms are identical when typing in the 'Subject Line' of ACT!.

In either of these two applications (any other field/cell), or any other
application, the system is fine. Note: In the Outlook v2000 client, typing
in the 'Subject Line', the system behaves just fine as well.

I noticed that the system had never received an update, so I applied all
current security patches and SP4, no change. I tore the box apart and
cleaned it up, reseated and reconnected everything except the CPU
(pain-in-the-butt connection) and still no change.

One more note: During startup, after loggin in, as the desktop is
loading/appearing, the system becomes very busy for 30 seconds to the point
where I cannot load the Task Manager until whatever is loading/processing is
finished.

Anti-Virus: McAffee (current) did not find anything.
Spy-Hunter: (current) did not find anything.

Thanks in advance,
Patrick Cohan

 

[Scott Harding - MS MVP]

This is most likely a Trojan or Spyware. Using only one of each type of
scanner may not be enough. I would the Housecall scan from www.antivirus.com
and also use Spybot or Adware to look for spyware.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Also some worms and viruses can "hide" from A/V scans. Try scanning in
Safe Mode as well.

Steve