PLZ : Explorer "too active" : many threads, many hanldes compared to others !!!!

[Pivert]

Hi,

my sons PC is running terribly slow.
When ctrl-alt-del into task manager I see that explorer.exe has many many
handles and threads ( about 5-5 times what I have).
System has about twice what I have.

I see no alien in teh program and processes listed in tasl manager.

Kaspersky and Bitdefender foudn 1 virus each, but that changed nope.
Ad-Aware SE : nothing and no change
Same : SpySweeper, Trojan Hunter.

I am almost sure there must be an intruder acting in background somewhere
( else why so many resources used by his explorer & system ?)

How can we investigate and block this ?

He did a clean install and less then a week later again he is hit !

He works on a LAN at high-school and needs that LAN.
Firewall is ZoneAlarm 4.5 free ( detects many netbios intrude attempts that
get blocked : to 4 per second !)

All ideas are wellcome !
Are there processes not listed in task manager ?
How find them ?

TIA for your lights !

Badly need them !
Pivert

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

How much memory does the machine have? How many icons appear in the
notification area on the right side of the taskbar (you may need to place
the mouse over the << to see them all)? Has he defragmented the hard drive
lately?