Machine has suddenly slowed to a crawl

[dave.logan1]

I've occasionally found my browser causing this problem and soaking up
100% CPU power if I'm logged onto a problem website (malfunctioning or
sinister). The first thing I do is to shut down the browser and clear
out the cache.

How do you clear out the cache?

Dave

 

[dave.logan1]

Hi Dave

comodo is pretty good. the first few days you use it, it will be kind of
annoying though. It's going to ask your permission for everything until it
gets itself programmed for the way you use your machine. Unfortunately,
you're going to have to watch all those hundreds of "should I allow this?"
messages carefully, too.

But how does one know what to allow and what not to? Some things are
obvious, but for instance, I keep being told by comodo that
iexplore.exe is trying to connect to the internet using svchost.exe.
iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer! If Internet Explorer always uses
svchost.exe in order to connect to the internet, why on earth doesn't
comodo know that? Why does it have to ask me? Or if IE *isn't*
supposed to use svchost.exe to connect to the internet, should I
select "Disable" - and does that mean I have some spyware despite
Spybot not finding any and despite having got rid of the hijacker's
remote control agent files?

Dave

 

[dave.logan1]

Hi Dave

Yeah, use System Restore to roll back a couple of weeks and see if that
helps.

I'd hoped to be able to avoid that because I've upgraded several
applications and installed some others in that time and it would be
incredibly time consuming to have to do it all again, but if that's
the only way I'll do it. But also I'm a bit worried about doing that
because I defragged my registry using TweakNow Power Tools a few days
ago and I'm not sure whether System Restore would cope with that - do
you know?

Also, given post 20 about terminating a service, and post 19 about
cleaning up my machine, what order should I do these in - sytem resore
first, or one of the other two?

Dave

 

[Mike T.]

Hi Dave



But how does one know what to allow and what not to? Some things are
obvious, but for instance, I keep being told by comodo that
iexplore.exe is trying to connect to the internet using svchost.exe.
iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer! If Internet Explorer always uses
svchost.exe in order to connect to the internet, why on earth doesn't
comodo know that? Why does it have to ask me? Or if IE *isn't*
supposed to use svchost.exe to connect to the internet, should I
select "Disable" - and does that mean I have some spyware despite
Spybot not finding any and despite having got rid of the hijacker's
remote control agent files?

Dave

Good questions, with no easy answers. In general, when you first start your
computer, Internet Explorer should be doing nothing at all, using
svchost.exe, or not. About the best way to figure out most 'permission'
pop-up boxes is to pay close attention to timing. Examples:

You log in, walk away to grab a cup of coffee, come back to the computer and
(according to multiple messages from Comodo) Internet Explorer is trying to
connect through svhost something or other (or something else), that's a
problem. You haven't asked for any application to connect to anything, but
something is still trying to connect. So who is -really- running your
computer?

But let's say you get your cup of coffee, return to the computer to find a
nice clean desktop with no messages begging for your attention. You launch
IE to browse the web and immediately get multiple requests for permission
for svchost.exe, launching app. iexplore.exe. It's probably safe to OK all
those. It boils down to, you launched a program, which referenced a helper
program, and now these programs are trying to make a connection, because you
asked them to.

As for why Comodo doesn't know this? Well it's more a problem with windows
than any particular windows app. like Comodo. For example: YOU know that
iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer. Comodo programmers know this also. The
problem is, a firewall is not effective unless it senses changes in
executable files. So the Comodo firewall application cannot just assume
that "iexplore.exe" is a safe application to run. Otherwise, every virus
writer would be targetting their malware at that specific file, and the
firewall (any firewall) would allow the virus-modified iexplore.exe to do
anything it wants to. That's why you have to re-program your firewall
periodically (it will prompt you). You know all those updates that
Microsoft is always prompting you to install? About every other one
modifies iexplore.exe to something that your firewall recognizes as (this
file has changed!!!). And that's a good thing. Because when your file
changes when you have NOT updated software (to your knowledge), then your
firewall needs to let you know that.

So it might seem like Comodo should be programmed better, to recognize
common programs. But it's actually better that it "not" recognize common
programs. This would be like ordering your security officer guarding the
front door to let in anybody wearing a red tie, without questioning them at
all. It makes no sense. Eventually, someone who wants to sneak in to your
building (for whatever reason) would get wise and wear a red tie to get past
the security officer.

On the other hand, certain other firewall products do make it a -bit- easier
to program them after you first install them. So comodo could do a better
job of making the user interface more user friendly. -Dave

 

[Mike T.]

Yeah, use System Restore to roll back a couple of weeks and see if that

I'd hoped to be able to avoid that because I've upgraded several
applications and installed some others in that time and it would be
incredibly time consuming to have to do it all again, but if that's
the only way I'll do it. But also I'm a bit worried about doing that
because I defragged my registry using TweakNow Power Tools a few days
ago and I'm not sure whether System Restore would cope with that - do
you know?

System Restore will undue any modifications you've made to your
registry -AFTER- the restore point you choose to revert to. Any app. you've
used to modify the registry is a red herring. System Restore won't have to
deal with tweaknow, except that tweaknow might be uninstalled if you choose
a restore point before tweaknow was installed.

Also, given post 20 about terminating a service, and post 19 about
cleaning up my machine, what order should I do these in - sytem resore
first, or one of the other two?

Dave

I don't know specifically what others have suggested you do, although I
suspect that their advice is probably good, or at least not harmful. What I
do know however, is that you should do System Restore FIRST, before anything
else. It's a good probability that your problem is caused by some messed-up
setting in your registry. System Restore should fix that. Anything else
you do would be UNdone by system restore, so it would likely be a waste of
effort to try something else before system restore. HOWEVER, you have
little to lose by trying other suggestions before the system restore route.

I would further advise you to copy all your important data files to a flash
drive or DVD media or something before you do anything to that system,
though. I'm starting to suspect this fix could get a bit messy. Protect
your data first, then attack the problem to try to solve it. -Dave

 

[hummingbird]

How do you clear out the cache?

In Internet Explorer: Menu item Tools\Internet Options and press the
button marked 'Delete Files' making sure you tick the secondary box
which appears. Then click ok ok as necessary.

 

[hummingbird]

Hi hummingbird



I don't know how to do that - please could you give me step by step
instructions?

....and you're running XP-Pro ???

OK:
Hit Start Menu, then Administrative Tools and select 'services'.
OR open the Run command box and enter 'services.msc' then enter.

This brings up a full list of all your services and for each one,
whether it is started automatically on boot, on demand or disabled.

You need to go down the list and see if there's a service which looks
like it might be related to that dodgy program you found.

You can get a full list of genuine services and what they're used for
from www.blackviper.com - he's an expert on Windows services.

Later, when you've solved this current problem, if you feel in the
mood you can probably disable up to 10 services which Win switches
on by default but are not usually required for most users. Follow the
guidance on blackviper's website. It might save you RAM/resources.

HTH

 

[Frank McCoy]

Good questions, with no easy answers. In general, when you first start your
computer, Internet Explorer should be doing nothing at all, using
svchost.exe, or not. About the best way to figure out most 'permission'
pop-up boxes is to pay close attention to timing. Examples:

You log in, walk away to grab a cup of coffee, come back to the computer and
(according to multiple messages from Comodo) Internet Explorer is trying to
connect through svhost something or other (or something else), that's a
problem. You haven't asked for any application to connect to anything, but
something is still trying to connect. So who is -really- running your
computer?

But let's say you get your cup of coffee, return to the computer to find a
nice clean desktop with no messages begging for your attention. You launch
IE to browse the web and immediately get multiple requests for permission
for svchost.exe, launching app. iexplore.exe. It's probably safe to OK all
those. It boils down to, you launched a program, which referenced a helper
program, and now these programs are trying to make a connection, because you
asked them to.

As for why Comodo doesn't know this? Well it's more a problem with windows
than any particular windows app. like Comodo. For example: YOU know that
iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer. Comodo programmers know this also. The
problem is, a firewall is not effective unless it senses changes in
executable files. So the Comodo firewall application cannot just assume
that "iexplore.exe" is a safe application to run. Otherwise, every virus
writer would be targetting their malware at that specific file, and the
firewall (any firewall) would allow the virus-modified iexplore.exe to do
anything it wants to. That's why you have to re-program your firewall
periodically (it will prompt you). You know all those updates that
Microsoft is always prompting you to install? About every other one
modifies iexplore.exe to something that your firewall recognizes as (this
file has changed!!!). And that's a good thing. Because when your file
changes when you have NOT updated software (to your knowledge), then your
firewall needs to let you know that.

So it might seem like Comodo should be programmed better, to recognize
common programs. But it's actually better that it "not" recognize common
programs. This would be like ordering your security officer guarding the
front door to let in anybody wearing a red tie, without questioning them at
all. It makes no sense. Eventually, someone who wants to sneak in to your
building (for whatever reason) would get wise and wear a red tie to get past
the security officer.

On the other hand, certain other firewall products do make it a -bit- easier
to program them after you first install them. So comodo could do a better
job of making the user interface more user friendly. -Dave

I've also found instances of iexplore to actually be a virus or Trojan,
NOT Internet Explorer!

Generally, if you find a file named iexplore.exe in the C:\WINDOWS
directory, it's *NOT* internet explorer, but somebody's malware.
To check, try renaming the file to something innocent like iexplore.tmp
and see if the problems don't go away, while at the same time IE itself
still runs, after rebooting so the bad file hasn't already been invoked.

If it really is IE, then you can always rename it back.
Most often (depending on the release and the OS), the real IE is located
in a subdirectory either of C:\WINDOWS or C:\Program Files.

In my copy of Win-XP, for example, the real iexplore.exe (version-7) is
in C:\WINDOWS\ie7\. The only iexplore* file in C:\WINDOWS is the
iexplore.ini file, which might be a leftover from previous
installations.

 

[Pongo Potts]

I'm running XP Pro SP2. I have Spybot S&D v1.4, Spyware Blaster v1.3,
and McAfee VirusScan v10, all up to date. I have defragged my hard
disk and run Chkdsk within the last week.

Yesterday, all of a sudden, my machine slowed to a crawl, to the
extent that when I'm typing, the screen can't update as quickly as I
can type and I have to frequently have to stop typing in order to give
the display time to catch up! It's not just typing, absolutely
everything is running incredibly slowly, but I'm just giving typing as
the most obvious example.

My CPU usage now hovers around 100% most of the time *whereas until
yesterday it used to be between 20-30% most of the time, unless I was
running a processor-intensive task*. (Even today it occasionally goes
down to around 30%, but is close to 100% most of the time, even when
I'm not doing anything on my computer at all).

If I look in Task Manager it says that the process that are hogging
most of my CPU are "System Idle Process", "taskmgr.exe" iexplore.exe
(if I have Internet Explorer open), and explorer.exe (if I have
Windows Explorer open), in roughly that order although the order
changes every second.

Disabling McAfee doesn't help.

Any ideas?

Dave

don't you just love it when all the anti Norton posters who recommend 'far
better' software which also turns out to be so called useless in this case.
Yet they profess Norton is crap.

I have Norton IS 2007 on 2 machines and it has detected a number of incoming
undesirables on both systems and it does not slow them down at all.

Long live Norton.

 

[kony]

Yet they profess Norton is crap.

Norton is _bloated_ crap.

 

[Pongo Potts]

Norton is _bloated_ crap.

in the hands of those with 10 bananas.................

 

[Andy Marston]

I've had a dozen machines like this!

The simple answer is remove Microsoft Update and revert back to
Windows Update.

Go to the Mirosoft Update page, select Change Settings on the laft
panel, scroll down to the bottow, deselect Microsoft Update. Confirm
the dialogue box that comes up. Hey presto!!! Working PC.

I now disable Microsoft Update as a matter of course on allnew PC
builds.

Microsoft Update gives you updates for things like MS Office, SQL
Server and a few other software titles.
Windows Update willl only give you updates for Windows.

Cheers,
Andy.

 

[JAD]

in the hands of those with 10 bananas.................

B.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyone who KNOWS....KNOWS

Norton system Worse Auntyvirus and Porouswall are UTTER PIECES OF CRAP

 

[Pongo Potts]

B.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyone who KNOWS....KNOWS

Norton system Worse Auntyvirus and Porouswall are UTTER PIECES OF
CRAP

another with 10 bananas.....................

 

[Mike T.]

B.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyone who KNOWS....KNOWS

another with 10 bananas.....................

Well he may have 10 bananas, but at least he knows what he's talking about.
If you have Norton anything on your computer, you should uninstall it,
immediately and permanently. Now I suppose some idiot is going to say that
I have 10 bananas. -Dave

 

[Pongo Potts]

Well he may have 10 bananas, but at least he knows what he's talking
about. If you have Norton anything on your computer, you should uninstall
it, immediately and permanently. Now I suppose some idiot is going to say
that I have 10 bananas. -Dave

no I am gonna say you have 10 bananas.............there that's
said...........from a happy Norton user.

 

[dave.logan1]

no I am gonna say you have 10 bananas.............there that's
said...........from a happy Norton user.

Your responses are hiardly those of a grown-up. And the fact that you
like something doesn't prove it's good. Scientific research has been
done on the subject - see http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/AGN/vtc/

Dave

 

[dave.logan1]

On a related topic, I just temporarily switched off my page file and
then ran defrag, in case the area of the hard disk being used by the
page file was fragmented. And what puzzles me is even after
defragging, in the "Estimated disk usage before defragmentation"
diagram, there is still quite a lot of fragmentation and also, lots
non-contiguous files with tiny amounts of free space between them,
*even though there is a large amount of contiguous free space on the
disk, more than enough to fully defrag everything and to move all the
data into one contiguous block - see diagram here:
http://tinyurl.com/3y5n5f

So my question is, is there a good reason for this, or is the XP
degragger just crap? And if the latter, is a good one available (and
please don't say Norton)?

I also ran TweakNow's registry cleaner and that and the defrag
between them seem to have got my performance back to normal, fingers
crossed! So maybe no need to roll back after all. But I'd still like
to know why the defragger doesn't do a better job.

 

[Pongo Potts]

Your responses are hiardly those of a grown-up. And the fact that you
like something doesn't prove it's good. Scientific research has been
done on the subject - see http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/AGN/vtc/

Dave

and another with 10 bananas......................

 

[Pongo Potts]

and another with 10 bananas......................

and because someone else doesn't like it, does not mean its no
good......................I get on fine with it as do hundreds of thousands
of others...............