Lost in space
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- Dec 1, 2002
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Augh... where to begin...
I've seen my number of weird problems, but never anything like this problem I noticed two days ago. I look at the task manager, and my computer is running at 100%, all of the time, and because of this, it runs slow as hell and crashes frequently.
My first thought was it had to be some severe case of spyware. I scanned with Ad-aware, Spybot, and Spyware Doctor. I found a few things, restarted, and promptly hit my head on the keyboard. Still 100% CPU usage. I moved up a step on the "oh noes!" ladder. It must be a virus! I scanned with F-Secure (more on that later >_<) as well as Trend Micro House Call. F-Secure found a few viruses (not unexpected), which I had to remove manually. After doing so, I restarted once again, and hoped for the best. If I'm posting this now, obviously you can tell what happened. Still 100%.
I searched around on the Internet, and found various forum posts of people asking for help with the same problem. The thing is, everyone who did solve it, seems to have solved it in a completely different way. Some uninstalled excess programs (tried it) and it stopped. Some killed off unnecessary services (tried it). Some reformatted and it went away. Some reformatted and it didn't go away. Most of the people mentioned that when they killed the explorer.exe task, their CPU usage dropped, and when they started it up again as a new task, it jumped to 100% again. This isn't the case for me; even without explorer.exe running, my CPU usage is 100%.
I tried a System Restore. I jumped back in time 3 days. I said hello to all of the desktop icons which I had deleted since then, and checked the task manager. Still 100%.
I booted up into safe mode. I figured if it was a problem with some driver or virus, the issue wouldn't appear in safe mode. I was wrong. Even in safe mode, my CPU runs at 100%.
I thought maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with F-Secure. It's provided free by my cable ISP (Charter), so I didn't think twice about using it. Hey, free virus protection! All good, right? Wrong. The damned thing runs no less than 12 separate processes in the background, and consumes over 70MB of RAM. I uninstalled F-Secure, and found that I was unable to use my browser(s) to get any information. I'd get "searching for http://www.google.com," and then "done" moments later, without anything appearing on the screen. I don't understand why, since I didn't have F-Secure running anything that would restrict or even otherwise affect my Internet connection - I only used it for the virus scanning. With much less hair then an hour earlier, I reinstalled the disaster, and my ability to surf was restored.
If you didn't read any of the above, atleast read this. Here's my HijackThis log (right click, save as -_-). After a cursory scan, I don't see anything that would be causing this (aside from the mass of F-Secure feces that has been splattered all over my system, but like I said earlier, the problem happened when it was gone). I'm at my wit's end. As I said above, some people even reformatted their hard drive and the problem persisted. I would reformat, but my computer did not come with the Windows XP CD. I have a Windows XP CD from my old computer, but it's the "upgrade" copy. From what I've read, you're not able to reformat with the upgrade CD. I have a product key from that CD, however.
So, I'm posting this in hopes that someone knows something that could help me without having to buy (again) a $200 copy of Windows XP to reformat my hard drive, which can't even be guaranteed to fix my problem. (i.e. the first person to read nothing but the topic title and reply with "zomg reformat" gets a boot where the sun doesn't shine)
Help me, O Greater Gods of Tech.
I've seen my number of weird problems, but never anything like this problem I noticed two days ago. I look at the task manager, and my computer is running at 100%, all of the time, and because of this, it runs slow as hell and crashes frequently.
My first thought was it had to be some severe case of spyware. I scanned with Ad-aware, Spybot, and Spyware Doctor. I found a few things, restarted, and promptly hit my head on the keyboard. Still 100% CPU usage. I moved up a step on the "oh noes!" ladder. It must be a virus! I scanned with F-Secure (more on that later >_<) as well as Trend Micro House Call. F-Secure found a few viruses (not unexpected), which I had to remove manually. After doing so, I restarted once again, and hoped for the best. If I'm posting this now, obviously you can tell what happened. Still 100%.
I searched around on the Internet, and found various forum posts of people asking for help with the same problem. The thing is, everyone who did solve it, seems to have solved it in a completely different way. Some uninstalled excess programs (tried it) and it stopped. Some killed off unnecessary services (tried it). Some reformatted and it went away. Some reformatted and it didn't go away. Most of the people mentioned that when they killed the explorer.exe task, their CPU usage dropped, and when they started it up again as a new task, it jumped to 100% again. This isn't the case for me; even without explorer.exe running, my CPU usage is 100%.
I tried a System Restore. I jumped back in time 3 days. I said hello to all of the desktop icons which I had deleted since then, and checked the task manager. Still 100%.
I booted up into safe mode. I figured if it was a problem with some driver or virus, the issue wouldn't appear in safe mode. I was wrong. Even in safe mode, my CPU runs at 100%.
I thought maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with F-Secure. It's provided free by my cable ISP (Charter), so I didn't think twice about using it. Hey, free virus protection! All good, right? Wrong. The damned thing runs no less than 12 separate processes in the background, and consumes over 70MB of RAM. I uninstalled F-Secure, and found that I was unable to use my browser(s) to get any information. I'd get "searching for http://www.google.com," and then "done" moments later, without anything appearing on the screen. I don't understand why, since I didn't have F-Secure running anything that would restrict or even otherwise affect my Internet connection - I only used it for the virus scanning. With much less hair then an hour earlier, I reinstalled the disaster, and my ability to surf was restored.
If you didn't read any of the above, atleast read this. Here's my HijackThis log (right click, save as -_-). After a cursory scan, I don't see anything that would be causing this (aside from the mass of F-Secure feces that has been splattered all over my system, but like I said earlier, the problem happened when it was gone). I'm at my wit's end. As I said above, some people even reformatted their hard drive and the problem persisted. I would reformat, but my computer did not come with the Windows XP CD. I have a Windows XP CD from my old computer, but it's the "upgrade" copy. From what I've read, you're not able to reformat with the upgrade CD. I have a product key from that CD, however.
So, I'm posting this in hopes that someone knows something that could help me without having to buy (again) a $200 copy of Windows XP to reformat my hard drive, which can't even be guaranteed to fix my problem. (i.e. the first person to read nothing but the topic title and reply with "zomg reformat" gets a boot where the sun doesn't shine)
Help me, O Greater Gods of Tech.