How Does this happen? (Spybot content)

bob4933 · Oct 4, 2015

Safe browser. I use a couple forums, scan for malware routinely (once every 3 days for spybot, and once a day on AVG), youtube constantly. I don't download anything unknown, and all downloads are from secure sources and virus scanned upon download.

My computer was sluggish this morning ... and I see 51892 files in use? How in gods name does that happen?

NZKshatriya · Oct 4, 2015

All I gotta say is........thats more crap than gets on my moms laptop in a month.

How in the.....

c627627 · Oct 4, 2015

Does this constitutes proof of malware. If you run CCleaner for a few seconds, it will remove temporary files, how many are left after running CCleaner? Temp files could be cookies and browser cache...

RJARRRPCGP · Oct 4, 2015

Looks more like your PC wasn't shut down properly.....

bob4933 · Oct 4, 2015

RJARRRPCGP said:
Looks more like your PC wasn't shut down properly.....

Computer is ALWAYS shut down "properly". I have no other way BUT properly.

c627627 said:
Does this constitutes proof of malware. If you run CCleaner for a few seconds, it will remove temporary files, how many are left after running CCleaner? Temp files could be cookies and browser cache...

Ran CCleaner, MalwareBytes, Spybot S&D, and AVG antivirus. All clean. It sure "feels" like malware, im just unsure how or what could be the cause of this.

RJARRRPCGP · Oct 4, 2015

bob4933 said:
Computer is ALWAYS shut down "properly". I have no other way BUT properly.

Ran CCleaner, MalwareBytes, Spybot S&D, and AVG antivirus. All clean. It sure "feels" like malware, im just unsure how or what could be the cause of this.

Looks like a ton of temp. files!

Janus67 · Oct 4, 2015

Running AVG, well there's your problem

RJARRRPCGP · Oct 4, 2015

RJARRRPCGP said:
Looks like a ton of temp. files!

That immediately reminds me of the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center campus, (Greenfield, NH) where power outages were frequent!
It was issues with their generator, not PSNH's fault, IIRC.

It resulted in me making an autoexec.bat that deletes temporary files on the next boot!

c627627 · Oct 4, 2015

Of course the ultimate solution has been posted before.
Nuke/Format. Partition. Fresh Install. Make things exactly as you like them to be.
Now make a drive image.

Simply reimaging your system will bring it back to the state it was in when you made the image.

I image once a month. Often several times a month. If *anything* takes a fraction of a second longer, I mage. If you dual boot and partition, you can make it so that by the time you take a short bathroom break, your reimage is done...

bob4933 · Oct 5, 2015

c627627 said:
Of course the ultimate solution has been posted before.
Nuke/Format. Partition. Fresh Install. Make things exactly as you like them to be.
Now make a drive image.

Simply reimaging your system will bring it back to the state it was in when you made the image.

I image once a month. Often several times a month. If *anything* takes a fraction of a second longer, I mage. If you dual boot and partition, you can make it so that by the time you take a short bathroom break, your reimage is done...

It IS a fresh install lol. Only been a couple weeks...

c627627 · Oct 5, 2015

If you had an image of when everything is set up the way you like it to be, then it wouldn't make a difference when the image was ruined, 5 minutes or 5 days later, you would reimage back to the state when everything was not

bob4933 said:
My computer was sluggish this morning.

Was it sluggish the morning before that? If it wasn't then going back would take only a few minutes, often quicker than diagnosing the smallest of problems...
Right now it might be a program that inserted itself to run at startup, it might be a whole number of things, we can only start speculating...

The big picture is that Windows *will* become sluggish at some point, when that happens why waste time format/fresh install/ install all drivers etc. from scratch? It's easier to setup an image, and then reimage in a few minutes to be back to when everything was not sluggish...

But back on finding the culprit, I would check what's running at startup that's slowing your computer down...

bob4933 · Oct 5, 2015

I have no problem reinstalling windows. I have all drivers and important files and programs saved on another hard drive, so flashing my OS takes me literally 20 minutes tops. Theres no point in flashing the OS if I dont know whats going on.

Startup is clean, I run msconfig and minimize tasks that start up when I load windows

It was fine the night before, when I logged in to check my email, it was running like I had no ram. I checked task manager, and there was a spike of cpu usage to 100%, and memory spike to ~8gb (I have 16), but no tasks were running anything hard. Again, I know this seems indicative of malware, but nothing would be malware on here. Is it possible a windows update or something that went wrong?

c627627 · Oct 5, 2015

Absolutely it's possible.
But how would you know unless you tested w/o update then installed all updates then tested again?

I make changes to my master image once a month and keep a txt file of all changes I make to it.
When - it is a *when* and not if - something like this happens to me, it's then easier to narrow down the culprit.

Specific windows update, driver update, new program, updated program, something that inserted itself to run at startup - this is why I use WinPatrol to INTERCEPT ANYTHING that tries to add itself to startup so that I can decide to allow it or not manually.

Yes, this can be caused by malware but it also can be caused by any of the legitimate program incompatibilities...

If you had a 100% healthy image and if you reimaged and the problem was still there, then this would be a time-saver since it would directly indicate a hardware problem... It could be that too...

But like I said, primary suspect is a service or a program running that was not running before...

NZKshatriya · Oct 5, 2015

do a command line search for files modified within range of date snafu occurred?
forfiles /P directory /S /D +(today'date - X days)

Or would that not help

Just kinda spitballing here

bob4933 · Oct 5, 2015

c627627 said:
Absolutely it's possible.
But how would you know unless you tested w/o update then installed all updates then tested again?

I make changes to my master image once a month and keep a txt file of all changes I make to it.
When - it is a *when* and not if - something like this happens to me, it's then easier to narrow down the culprit.

Specific windows update, driver update, new program, updated program, something that inserted itself to run at startup - this is why I use WinPatrol to INTERCEPT ANYTHING that tries to add itself to startup so that I can decide to allow it or not manually.

Yes, this can be caused by malware but it also can be caused by any of the legitimate program incompatibilities...

If you had a 100% healthy image and if you reimaged and the problem was still there, then this would be a time-saver since it would directly indicate a hardware problem... It could be that too...

But like I said, primary suspect is a service or a program running that was not running before...

I get what you're saying 100%. I'm not thrilled with just starting ove r without knowing what happened though. No issues since, I'll keep digging around when I get home

RollingThunder · Oct 5, 2015

bob4933 said:
I get what you're saying 100%. I'm not thrilled with just starting ove r without knowing what happened though. No issues since, I'll keep digging around when I get home

Bob,

Are you able to list your running processes alphabetically? Just a hunch, perhaps to eliminate it.

bob4933 · Oct 5, 2015

RollingThunder said:
Bob,

Are you able to list your running processes alphabetically? Just a hunch, perhaps to eliminate it.

Yeah dude. I'll be more thorough when I get home tonight. I realize now I'm not giving anyone much to work with.

bob4933 · Oct 5, 2015

Janus67 said:
Running AVG, well there's your problem

Wow. Sarcasm or not, this was 100% the problem. AVG keeps making log entries (over and over and over and over and over and over), causing the computer slowdown and the massive amount of files.

From yesterday to today ->

NZKshatriya · Oct 5, 2015

Yeah....

AVG......
Avast, it has pirate talk language setting. And less logs.

RollingThunder · Oct 6, 2015

bob4933 said:
Wow. Sarcasm or not, this was 100% the problem. AVG keeps making log entries (over and over and over and over and over and over), causing the computer slowdown and the massive amount of files.

I'm not so sure about that. I run AVG (among others) and never had that issue but I did have a root kit
that did exactly what you're getting: Thousands of temp files created over and over. That's why I ask
for a list of your processes to see what's running so that specific root kit can be eliminated or blamed.

It was my fault it found access, I mishandled it but AVG did find it, I just didn't delete it correctly.

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