PC running slowly - virus?

Z

Zapatista

Registered User
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Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago while surfing the net my PC became really slow all of a sudden. I have broadband so it should be fairly fast. The internet's not the only thing affected though. Every operation takes longer than it should. For example if I press on the start button, my program list takes about a minute to come up. Before this happened I had no anti-virus so when the problems started I bought Norton 2005. I ran a full system scan and 14 harmful threats were found and repaired/deleted. However my PC is still ridiculously slow. Could a virus have done irreparable damage to my hardrive? Is there anything I can attempt to remedy the problems I'm having?

Any & all advice is greatly appreciated.

Zapa.
 
Re: Help !

Please give your posts a more meaningful title than "Help!" as explained in the (I've changed the title to something more meaningful and more likely to elicit useful responses now).

A virus is one possibility and you should make sure that you do thorough scans for viruses and other parasites with up to date scanners. explains more about protecting and disinfecting your PC. Are you sure that your existing virus scanner is continuously doing background scanning and live checking for problems and is being kept updated?

There would be lots of other reasons for the problem too. Have you changed anything (e.g. installed or reconfigured any software or hardware) between when it worked OK and when the problems arose?
 
Clubman,

Thanks for your sppedy reply. I downloaded a poker program recently but it was probably about a week before the problems started. I have since deleted it anyway. Like I said I purchased Norton2005 and I updated it as soon as I got it. I'm not sure if it is running constantly in the background or not. After I ran the scan the computer didn't speed up at all. Even though 14 threats were detected and dealt with.

Zapa.
 
You should also try some of the other virus, adware and parasite scanners/tools mentioned in the other thread - many of them are free for personal use. Sometimes problems not picked up by one tool are picked up by another. You should also be running a firewall especially with broadband. But right now you need to identify the cause of the problem and rectify that. Try checking the Task Manager (press the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys at the same time and click on the Task Manager button) then click on the CPU column to sort the processes by CPU time used to see if any specific process is hogging the PC. This might give you some insight into what's sapping the PC's processing power.
 
I checked the task manager. There are two processes running that are taking up virtually all the CPU time. One is a system process - services.exe. The other is a user process called hot_plug.exe. There doesn't appear to be an option to view information about the processes. I imagine the system process is most likely required. However the hot_plug one is most likely not. I could end the process but I am curious about what it is.
 
Zapatista said:
I downloaded a poker program recently but it was probably about a week before the problems started. I have since deleted it anyway.
Click to expand...
Did you uninstall it before you deleted it?
 
Hope I'm not speaking to soon but I think I just found the problem. I aborted those processes that were running on task manager. Everything seems fine now.

Cheers Clubman

Zapa.
 
Doing a google on hot_plug.exe suggests it may be Spyware, try downloading and running Spybot and Adaware
Services.exe is normally present on the system but maybe a piece of spyware is using that name to try and mask itself as it should not be using much CPU if the PC is idle.
Killing processes is not a complete fix when you next reboot they could load again.
 
I'm ressurecting an old thread but its relevant to my question. My PC is also running incredibly slowly and has been for ages.

I've ignored it until I got a message saying that I'm low on virtual memory. What is this and how can I get it?

I also followed all the above advice - no viruses as far as I can see, I've ran LOTS of those named in the clean pc thread. However, when I tried Windows Task Manager as suggested above, theres 44 processes running, most with weird names such as spoolsv.exe and dlbtbmgr.exe which altogether are taking up approx 262k of a 351k "commit charge". Is this all linked? What do I do, I'm just your average computer user, I've little specialist knowledge.

Thanks in advance!
 
I'd try the following:
1. Open a dos session and run chkdsk /r to repair
2. Defrag your hard disk
3. Download/Run spybot or similar to see if you have any spyware or other nuisance software
4. Download/Run hijackthis which will check what processes are being created at startup to see if they are valid. You can post the log to a recognised techie forum for help...

From googling:
spoolsv is a valid windows process
dlbtmgr is a Dell multimedia process

Good luck
 
black_pearl said:
I've ignored it until I got a message saying that I'm low on virtual memory. What is this and how can I get it?
Click to expand...
Virtual memory is memory generated on the hard disc once you've run out of real memory (RAM).

When this happens your computer runs very slowly.

Adding more virtual memory will not help.

The main problem is to figure out why you're running out of memory in the first place.
 
Thanks for that.
I know this is a really basic question but how do I open a dos session? And will I just type in
chkdsk /r
and hit enter?
 
From Start menu chose Command Prompt (XP).

You should get a little black window with a c:> prompt.

At the prompt type in chkdsk /r and then hit the carriage return

Alternatively select Run from the start menu and type the same command.

chkdsk checks for bad disk sectors and repairs them.

The defrag reorganises files so they are in contiguous parts of the disk. This can take hours and hours but it's worth it if you have a lot of data ... and are doing multiple deletes and inserts of files.

The other steps check for rogue programmes.
 
Have defragged the disk, took about half an hour but its done. Ran spybot, everything fine. Will give the dos session thing a go now. Thanks again Gearoid!
 
No problem.
Looks like the defrag didn't have to do too much so was inconsequential.

To check on CPU usage:

Also do a Crtl-Alt-Delete to brink up windows Task Manager.

Click on the Processes tab and then click on the Mem Usage header to sort desnding on Memory Usage in the CPU.

What are the top 5 heaviest users?
 
Re-read thread and I see you've already done that... but what are the worst offenders? Is it simply the case you need more RAM? Just wondering... In any case can you list the worst processes in terms of CPU usage... thanks
 
ran the dos thingy, apparantly the "volume is clean".

As regards the processes, they keep on changing but
iexplore.exe (huge at about 26,000 k)
LUCOMS~1.exe (which appeared and then just disapperared - i googled it, its something to do with norton Anti-virus)
svchost.exe 3,900k
explorer.exe 4,000k
CCAPP.exe
gcasDtServ.exe

Is RAM the same as harddisk space? I deleted stuff and now have 8GB free - more free than used.
 
RAM is the memory of your computer where processing takes place.
Hard disk is where the files are stored.

One or two things... I've had problems with ccapp and Norton in general.

The fact ccapp is running would suggest that your system is reasonably well protected but in doing so it may be causing performance problems...

I don't know how old your system is or the specification but it may be that Norton and other bona fide programmes are using up much of the processor.

Also, you need to ensure that the operating system has sufficient memory for what is called the swap file.

It would be a good idea to download a tool called sisoft sandra which runs and gives a full report on your system in terms of processor speed, memory available, hard disk, swap etc. Perhaps you can post the results? What you may find though is that the spec of your PC is too low for your apps. Is it still under warranty or is it an old pc perchance?

PC Maintenance can take a while to learn but there are a lot of informative sites. It might be a good idea for you to start reading some websites on basic PC maintenance.
 
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