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Okay. So since yesterday my internet has been crapping out. Even as I type this my normally 750megs a second cable modem is struggled to finish loading the smiley icons. It seems to do this fairly often, and about every three months I have to call the comcast guy here, because they're idiots over there and test my line for 3 seconds and go "It seems to be fine," but the problem is sporadic and I guess they don't understand that.
My ping in Warcraft hit the 4000's last night.
Now normally the Comcast guy comes out here and fixes the end of a wire or something and magically it works again for another three months. But this time is different: my modem isn't given any indications of struggling, and for little patches, it works beautifully as ever. I check out my processes and I see multiple SVCHOST.EXE instances...
I believe I've contracted some kind of virus, long story short, but all of my scanning and removing of things hasn't worked. I even installed Norton (I've been using that POS, AVG) but it wouldn't let me update--not all that dissimilar from this mystery virus my friend's computer had that we couldn't even get it to detect, let alone remove. My friend, before we formatted his machine, had me store some files on my computer and I'm betting that is why this has happened. Before this I remember never having more than two SVCHOST.exe instances and they were always part of the 'system' grouping. Now I have six, from all kinds of places.
I went into my registry, backed it up, and manually deleted some of these. Hopefully it will be of help to me. I only erased the ones that looked unofficial.
Can anyone help? Whatever is wrong is raping my connection--even websites and my AIM load uselessly slowly. I could barely make this post.
I've ran Spybot (though I'm not sure it updated because of the connection crapping out), and ran Ad-Aware with newest updates. It found what is usually finds on average--nothing out of the ordinary. Norton wouldn't work at all and AVG found a single viral file that I deleted but it did not help.
Maybe I should just format anyways...since I keep everything on my Ext. Drive now I might as well have a clean install of windows to keep this thing running nice (I've never reformatted this machine before...I kind of don't want to, I have a lot to lose, file-wise). But that brings me to my next question.
* * * * * *
My second question is a bit weirder. If I can't fix this problem I suppose I could format, but I am always paranoid about that because every other time I've done it there's almost always something that slips through the cracks, some files that get left behind, etc.
I have a huge External Hard Drive, in which I've installed pretty much all of my games and keep all my files. I know the files will be safe during the format; but what about the games?
I know it sounds strange but I figure I wouldn't have to reinstall them at all. The only disadvantage would be that their respective uninstalls wouldn't work anymore...but then again, if they aren't in the registry anymore, I could just manually delete them, couldn't I?
I also once moved a game off a computer I formatted then put it back, and all that happened was it asked for the CD key again. What exactly will happen if I reinstall windows and format on my C drive but leave all of my games intact on my X drive?
If it comes to it, I figured I could probably search out the registry sections for each of those games and save the strings on the X drive, and reapply them after the format.
Any of this sound viable at all?
My ping in Warcraft hit the 4000's last night.
Now normally the Comcast guy comes out here and fixes the end of a wire or something and magically it works again for another three months. But this time is different: my modem isn't given any indications of struggling, and for little patches, it works beautifully as ever. I check out my processes and I see multiple SVCHOST.EXE instances...
I believe I've contracted some kind of virus, long story short, but all of my scanning and removing of things hasn't worked. I even installed Norton (I've been using that POS, AVG) but it wouldn't let me update--not all that dissimilar from this mystery virus my friend's computer had that we couldn't even get it to detect, let alone remove. My friend, before we formatted his machine, had me store some files on my computer and I'm betting that is why this has happened. Before this I remember never having more than two SVCHOST.exe instances and they were always part of the 'system' grouping. Now I have six, from all kinds of places.
I went into my registry, backed it up, and manually deleted some of these. Hopefully it will be of help to me. I only erased the ones that looked unofficial.
Can anyone help? Whatever is wrong is raping my connection--even websites and my AIM load uselessly slowly. I could barely make this post.
I've ran Spybot (though I'm not sure it updated because of the connection crapping out), and ran Ad-Aware with newest updates. It found what is usually finds on average--nothing out of the ordinary. Norton wouldn't work at all and AVG found a single viral file that I deleted but it did not help.
Maybe I should just format anyways...since I keep everything on my Ext. Drive now I might as well have a clean install of windows to keep this thing running nice (I've never reformatted this machine before...I kind of don't want to, I have a lot to lose, file-wise). But that brings me to my next question.
* * * * * *
My second question is a bit weirder. If I can't fix this problem I suppose I could format, but I am always paranoid about that because every other time I've done it there's almost always something that slips through the cracks, some files that get left behind, etc.
I have a huge External Hard Drive, in which I've installed pretty much all of my games and keep all my files. I know the files will be safe during the format; but what about the games?
I know it sounds strange but I figure I wouldn't have to reinstall them at all. The only disadvantage would be that their respective uninstalls wouldn't work anymore...but then again, if they aren't in the registry anymore, I could just manually delete them, couldn't I?
I also once moved a game off a computer I formatted then put it back, and all that happened was it asked for the CD key again. What exactly will happen if I reinstall windows and format on my C drive but leave all of my games intact on my X drive?
If it comes to it, I figured I could probably search out the registry sections for each of those games and save the strings on the X drive, and reapply them after the format.
Any of this sound viable at all?