Is this a virus?

[julian8888888]

A few days ago I started getting lag when opening files in my shared
folder. I only get lag when opening files from this folder on this
hard drive. All other files on the hard drive open and run normally.

A few days ago I had my computer on transferring files when we had a
power outage. Could this be the cause? I ran disk defragmenter and
did a spyware and virus scan with Bullgaurd and Spybot. Nothing was
detected. I also cleaned my registry and cookies. None of this
helped. I'm wondering if somehow my drive has errors that the
defragmenter didn't fix or if this is a virus or spyware that is
evading detection. Even files that had been downloaded much earlier
before the power cut are lagging upon opening.

In Taskmanager I noticed svchost is listed 5 times. I don't know if
this is normal but I don't remember this from before when my computer
is idle. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: <[email protected]>

| A few days ago I started getting lag when opening files in my shared
| folder. I only get lag when opening files from this folder on this
| hard drive. All other files on the hard drive open and run normally.
|
| A few days ago I had my computer on transferring files when we had a
| power outage. Could this be the cause? I ran disk defragmenter and
| did a spyware and virus scan with Bullgaurd and Spybot. Nothing was
| detected. I also cleaned my registry and cookies. None of this
| helped. I'm wondering if somehow my drive has errors that the
| defragmenter didn't fix or if this is a virus or spyware that is
| evading detection. Even files that had been downloaded much earlier
| before the power cut are lagging upon opening.
|
| In Taskmanager I noticed svchost is listed 5 times. I don't know if
| this is normal but I don't remember this from before when my computer
| is idle. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Are you accessing the files via the share or via the the local hard disk ?

That's BullGuard AV ? If yes that's an OEM of BitDefender AV software.

Having 5 copies of SVCHOST.EXE is normal. What is important is NOT the number of copies but
where they are being executed from. They should all be executed from %windir%\system32 if
SVCHOST.EXE is executed from a different location it is a sure sign of a malweare infection.
Software such as Sysinternals Process Explorer is good for identifying the fully qualified
path of where a running process has been executed from.
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

 

[julian8888888]

Thanks David. I'm accessing the files from my hard disk locally. That
is, the shared folder is a folder on my hard drive that is specified
for sharing but is on my drive and not a local network.

These drives are in RAID 0 to act as one drive. I'm running Windows
XP I forgot to mention.

I tried that program and it shows all five instances are coming from
windows. I ran chkdsk last night. It took a while and I left it to
finish. When It was done I tried and found the same problem. I
downloaded the trial version of Bullguard which gives you a few months
of usage. I also did the same with AVG. Both of these virus scanners
turned up no results. I'm going to try another spyware scanner to see
if Spybot is missing something.

 

[julian8888888]

When I start to lag I open up Task Manager and see that explorer.exe is
taking up 99% of the processor.

What I do is end the process and then start explorer.exe back up
manually. I don't know why it's lagging on files it should run fast
and normally will.

 

[julian8888888]

When I start to lag I open up Task Manager and see that explorer.exe is
taking up 99% of the processor.

What I do is end the process and then start explorer.exe back up
manually. I don't know why it's lagging on files it should run fast
and normally will.

 

[julian8888888]

When I start to lag I open up Task Manager and see that explorer.exe is

taking up 99% of the processor.
What I do is end the process and then start explorer.exe back up
manually. I don't know why it's lagging on files it should run fast
and normally will. I also found that simply opening the folder gets
the lag started. Selecting a file for copy also produces a seemingly
endless lag.

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: <[email protected]>

| Thanks David. I'm accessing the files from my hard disk locally. That
| is, the shared folder is a folder on my hard drive that is specified
| for sharing but is on my drive and not a local network.
|
| These drives are in RAID 0 to act as one drive. I'm running Windows
| XP I forgot to mention.
|
| I tried that program and it shows all five instances are coming from
| windows. I ran chkdsk last night. It took a while and I left it to
| finish. When It was done I tried and found the same problem. I
| downloaded the trial version of Bullguard which gives you a few months
| of usage. I also did the same with AVG. Both of these virus scanners
| turned up no results. I'm going to try another spyware scanner to see
| if Spybot is missing something.

It doesn't sound like a virus but an OS related issue.

If SpyBot S&D v1.4 doesn't help... I would suggest posting this in;
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

 

[julian8888888]

Thanks, I'll try that then.