J
jbclem
Yesterday, for no apparent reason, the Services and Controller app
(WinNT\System32\services.exe) starting using up most of the cpu processing capacity. It
persisted and slowed the computer down to a crawl. I checked in FileMonitor and saw
that it(services.exe) was pointing at my Hosts file. I couldn't rename the Hosts file
(WinNT\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts ) but managed to move it to another folder so there
was no Hosts file in its original location. The problem continued so I rebooted the
computer. The problem continued and I discovered there was a new Hosts file in it's
place, with the same long list of web sites inside. I've renamed and deleted the Hosts
file before and never had a replacement appear like this so I guessed something virus or
trojan-like was going on.
I ran Norton Antivirus and The Cleaner and didn't find anything. Coincidentally at the
time this was occuring my cable connection was down so nothing was going in or out.
Somewhere during or after I was running Norton (a second time) or the Cleaner the
problem stopped. There was no indication that either program found a trojan or anything
nasty.
Does anyone know what could have caused this problem. I want to find the culprit file
and delete it (and also would like to remember it for the next time this happens). BTW,
there was nothing unusual in the startup (msconfig.exe) files and I also checked with
Advanced Startup Manager and found nothing in the registry that could have caused this
problem(it didn't start after a reboot anyways).
jc
(WinNT\System32\services.exe) starting using up most of the cpu processing capacity. It
persisted and slowed the computer down to a crawl. I checked in FileMonitor and saw
that it(services.exe) was pointing at my Hosts file. I couldn't rename the Hosts file
(WinNT\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts ) but managed to move it to another folder so there
was no Hosts file in its original location. The problem continued so I rebooted the
computer. The problem continued and I discovered there was a new Hosts file in it's
place, with the same long list of web sites inside. I've renamed and deleted the Hosts
file before and never had a replacement appear like this so I guessed something virus or
trojan-like was going on.
I ran Norton Antivirus and The Cleaner and didn't find anything. Coincidentally at the
time this was occuring my cable connection was down so nothing was going in or out.
Somewhere during or after I was running Norton (a second time) or the Cleaner the
problem stopped. There was no indication that either program found a trojan or anything
nasty.
Does anyone know what could have caused this problem. I want to find the culprit file
and delete it (and also would like to remember it for the next time this happens). BTW,
there was nothing unusual in the startup (msconfig.exe) files and I also checked with
Advanced Startup Manager and found nothing in the registry that could have caused this
problem(it didn't start after a reboot anyways).
jc