windows exporer in overdrive

[Ken Blake, MVP]

OK, I downloaded Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and ran a full scan, finding 8
trojans, 1 Rogue.DriveCleaner and a Rootkit.Agent and deleting them. We’ll
seeing if any of these were causing the sporadic CPU hogging, which today
showed up in iTunes for the first time!

Bear in mind that 8 infections is a lot. You may have removed them,
but you may be left with damage that they have caused.

It's extremely important to *prevent* malware infection, not just
remove it after you're gotten infected. So it may be necessary to do a
clean reinstallation of Windows to get yourself back to normal.

 

[Markkk]

I downloaded Process Explorer today and installed it to run instead of my
Task Manager. Since getting rid of the trojans and other malware Tuesday, the
computer has been much less hyperactive, sounding more like it did during the
first year after I bought it, and before it started doing its excessive heavy
breathing and slowing down sometimes while printing, etc. So maybe those were
the problem, like you thought, though it did spontaneously shut down and
reboot shortly after being turned on this morning. This might be one of the
problems that Ken Blake wrote could possibly persist due to damage done by
the malware, so I may still have to reinstall Windows -- a big job for which
I’ll have to back up data files, etc.

Overall, though, things seem better -- knock on wood -- and I’m ready to
track down any unknown excessive CPU usage with Process Explorer if it comes
back.

Thanks for your and Ken’s help.

 

[Gerry]

Mark

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by
allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on
the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced,
Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck box before
Automatically Restart.

Do not re-enable automatic restart on system failure until you have
resolved the problem. Check for variants of the Stop Error message.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Markkk]

Done. Now we'll wait. Thanks!

Mark

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by
allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on
the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced,
Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck box before
Automatically Restart.

Do not re-enable automatic restart on system failure until you have
resolved the problem. Check for variants of the Stop Error message.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Gerry]

Mark

Please keep us informed.



--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Markkk]

Well the unnecessary CPU usage came back today, first in iexplore.exe, then
spoolsv.exe, both programs running about 50% usage for extended periods and
slowing processing down to a crawl. The command lines are as follows:

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

and

C:\WINDOWS\System32\spoolsv.exe

Since I had been on the Internet for awhile before the iexplore.exe started
acting up, I ran a complete scan by Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, which turned
up nothing, a clean machine.

Any ideas about finding out what these programs are up to when they hog the
CPU?