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  #1  
Old 03-24-2006, 09:55 AM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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100% CPU usage slowing me down

The other day I upgraded to the fastest internet connection my cable company offers. Since that day, my PC is running slower than it ever has. I don't know if that is the cause or a coincidence, but it has nearly shut me down.

I've searched the web and tried everything that seems prudent but I can't restore my speed. The worst problem is that it takes several minutes to open a program from the start menu; basic ones like MS Word, MS Outlook Express and Internet Explorer.

I'm running Windows XP Home with SP2 and all updates.

Task manager says I'm at 100% CPU usage at all times.

These are the things I've done:

- Run my anti-virus software with the latest updates. System reported clean.

-Run AdAware with the latest updates. No spyware found. AdAware only found my Most Recently Used list, and struggled with my SpyBot files.

-Run SpyBot S&D with the latest updates. SpyBot found nothing.

-Shut down System Restore and run Stinger. Found the BugBear virus and repaired it. Performance was still slow afterward. (Do I need to go find a patch for this or would that have been applied with automatic updates over the years?)

- Defragmented my hard drive and even cleared my prefetch files.

- Tried to run the Housecall from Trendmicro, but it told me that my connection was too slow. Even after letting it work for ten hours last night, it never completed the download and configuration to even start the HouseCall.

- Ran Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool and it reported the system clean of the latest threats.

- Adjusted XP for best performance. This switched me to Classic View, mainly, but I haven't noticed any improvement in speed.

- Left-click on Start | Right-click on My Computer | Left-click on Properties took me to my System Properties where I did that tweak yesterday. It won't let me into my system properties now. Following that route just leaves me staring at the start menu. When I was there, yesterday, I did use the Advanced and Performance tabs to verity that the box was checked to allot most processor time to running programs rather than background services.

Still showing 100% CPU usage.

Last night I went into msconfig and was suprised to find that I was in Selective Startup Mode. I reverted to Normal Mode and restarted. I ran ran all the remedies mentioned above again. I got some mild improvement, but am still showing 100% CPU usage. I checked again this morning and found myself in Normal mode as expected.

I even turned off the Indexing Service for my hard drive. That helped a little bit, but the whole thing is still slower than it should be.

Do you think I still have an undetected virus or some other problem?

Last edited by Sam Wereb; 03-24-2006 at 10:02 AM.
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  #2  
Old 03-24-2006, 11:13 AM
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Jamey Saunders Jamey Saunders is offline
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When you press CTRL+ALT+DEL and bring up the task manager, click on the heading for the CPU column. What process is hogging all the CPU cycles?


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Old 03-24-2006, 11:21 AM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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Hey, Jamey.

Thanks for looking in.

The list of processes says that iexplore.exe is using 21.152k, (I am running two brower instances at the moment.) The next largest hogs are explorer.exe at 5,356k, svchost.exe at 5,140 and MsMpEng.exe at 4,900k.

I looked up all of my running processes online and they are all reported to be legitimate and probably not virus programs. Databases indicate that svshost.exe can be a disguise for a worm, sometimes, but I can't figure out how to determine for certain and I expect that the tools I've run might be able to handle that investigation for me.

I don't see a heading for a CPU column in Task Manager - just 5 tabs: Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking and Users. All see to be right.

Last edited by Sam Wereb; 03-24-2006 at 11:27 AM.
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Old 03-24-2006, 01:53 PM
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Jamey Saunders Jamey Saunders is offline
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Hi Sam,

When the Task Manager comes up, click on the Processes tab. There should be a CPU column.

For what it's worth, I had a rogue process that was locking up my machine, but I couldn't see where it was chewing up processor time or memory. I was finally able to narrow it down to a program that had a worm attached to it. None of the antivirus or spyware programs had been able to find it. I was able to narrow it down to that program by bringing up the task manager and shutting things down. As soon as I shut this program down, my performance went through the roof (comparatively). A quick uninstall and re-install of Firefox (the affected program) and I am back in business.

That's the first time I ever saw something bring a system to its knees without showing major CPU or memory usage. It kinda makes me wonder if there's something floating around out there in the wild that nobody's found yet.


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Old 03-24-2006, 03:13 PM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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Jamey-
I found that list and it says that Pop3trap.exe is using 99% of it. That can't be right. What do you think?
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Old 03-24-2006, 03:21 PM
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Jamey Saunders Jamey Saunders is offline
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Google says that pop3trap.exe is part of the PC-cillin security suite from TrendMicro, so it may be a leftover from a prior run of Housecall. I'd kill that process, then go into the Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and check to see if there's anything from TrendMicro there. If there is, delete it. Then do a system search for TrendMicro, Housecall, PC-cillin, and pop3trap.exe. Delete any of those files.

Once you kill that pop3trap process, your system should return to normal. But if it restarts itself every time you restart your computer, it should definately be removed.


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  #7  
Old 03-24-2006, 08:38 PM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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Finally got a scan from Symantec to run. Found a couple nasty infections: Adware.BetterInternet amd Download.Trojan. They're gone now and I'm back to 2% CPU usage - just like my brain. Pretty fast now, too. Thanks, Jamey.
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