Task manager

Hey there everybody, I just installed win2k about a month ago and now it seems to be slowing down a bit. That's when I noticed a couple of new programs that I didn't recognize showing up in the processes tab of the windows task manager.{SMSS.exe and CSRSS.exe} I was wondering if there was a list composed anywhere that I could compare to so if those were not what was causing it to mess up I might be able to figure out what was causing it. But it seems like my computer is going about 20% slower than it should be.

I've updated windows to the best of my capability, I defragged yesterday and ran spybot S&D. I couldn't get ad-aware to install, it kept giving me "defense.exe" instead of ad-aware.zip\exe or something similar. So I tried installing defense.exe from download.com but it just gave me a .ref file. I've got winzip installed right now, so it's not the programs fault I don't think for installing it wrong.

Well, any advice on what I should do is greatly appreciated.

-Gunther

Just do a search at google for those names. Do seperate searches for smss.exe and csrss.exe. One of the first links that should come up is "smss.exe - smss.exe process information" (if you searched for smss.exe for example), that goes to a website called www.liutilities.com. It is a site that seems to give process descriptions and information for just about any file I've ever found in taskmanager and searched for. Both of those are apparently system processes needed by windows. Though there seems to be a trojan with the same name of smss.exe, though you how tell which is which just by looking in taskmanager, I don't know. Virus scan I guess.

Anyways, whenever I come across mystery entries in taskmanager, I always just hit up google. You can usually find out what's going on in the first couple of links.

Good info. Might I add one of my favorite tools/sites for this sort of thing
http://www.lafn.org/webconnect/mentor/startup/PENINDEX.HTM

Well, everything that I found on my task manager was legit, but my keyboard and mouse are bugging. *sigh* I don't think it is my mouse& keyboard, as there is no rhyme or reason to when they cut out.

I gotta get some more virus scanners.

EDIT: PS does anyone know a good registry cleaner? the link I was given was downloaded, but it only got rid of a few saying I would have to buy the program to get rid of everything. I'm going to go googling for a good one.

Gunther said:

Hey there everybody, I just installed win2k about a month ago and now it seems to be slowing down a bit. That's when I noticed a couple of new programs that I didn't recognize showing up in the processes tab of the windows task manager.{SMSS.exe and CSRSS.exe} I was wondering if there was a list composed anywhere that I could compare to so if those were not what was causing it to mess up I might be able to figure out what was causing it. But it seems like my computer is going about 20% slower than it should be.

I've updated windows to the best of my capability, I defragged yesterday and ran spybot S&D. I couldn't get ad-aware to install, it kept giving me "defense.exe" instead of ad-aware.zip\exe or something similar. So I tried installing defense.exe from download.com but it just gave me a .ref file. I've got winzip installed right now, so it's not the programs fault I don't think for installing it wrong.

Well, any advice on what I should do is greatly appreciated.

-Gunther

Click to expand...

If your computer is running slower and you've eliminated other variables, like HD needing de-fragging, etc., then you can be 95% sure you're infected with malware of some kind.

This is my task manager in Win2000, which is just slightly trimmed down in a few useless services which I consider security risks, and increased by my Symantic (Norton) Firewall and Virus stopper.

Image in a second: Well it seems they (photobucket) want to chew up my jpg and spit it out in a useless format. You can get the full Win2000TaskMgr.bmp file at:

http://www.mytempdir.com/657675 for the next 14 days only. You don't need to register.

All the cc applications are Symantic's, as well as a few others. The only thing running is my folding at home monitor (FahMon), and two F@Home clients and the cores that they control.

Oh yeah, the uguru stuff is the monitoring/oclocking software that came with my Abit mobo, so that's not a worry.

When I was heavily infected (prior to my router and Symantic set up), I went to microsoft and ran their malware (software) removal tool, and also went to Symantic and ran their check of my system.

It takes a while, but it did a pretty good job. There are several other such sites. Some malware has adapted and won't let Symantic or other popular malware stoppers run, so that's a real problem. But no virus can run without either having the wrong name in the task manager, or the right name, but the wrong filesize in the directory.

Good luck.

Adak

Gunther said:

PS does anyone know a good registry cleaner? the link I was given was downloaded, but it only got rid of a few saying I would have to buy the program to get rid of everything. I'm going to go googling for a good one.

Click to expand...

These are all FREE registry cleaners, all of which I've used... although I prefer EasyCleaner over the rest, as it scans the entire registry (similar to RegScrubXP) instead of just certain keys.

Lexun RegScrubXP 3.25
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Lexun_RegScrubXP_d2048.html

TweakNow RegCleaner Standard 2.6.9
http://www.majorgeeks.com/TweakNow_RegCleaner_Standard_d4134.html

EasyCleaner 2.0.6 Build 7
http://www.majorgeeks.com/EasyCleaner_d414.html

CCleaner 1.28.277
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_d4191.html

Thanks for the links, I also found something that I suspected may have been the cause. An admin account seperate from any that I made was activated. I deleted it to fast to remember the name, but it was like "asp.net" or something similar. I hope it doesn't respawn itself. Well, I'm hoping this will stop the slowness of it all. I'll d\l those programs btw redduc, thanks again for all the help.