Sluggish computer - possible spyware

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Richard Fangnail - 31 Oct 2005 00:31 GMT

My friend's computer is slow in a certain way. It loads web pages at a
normal speed.

But sometimes when you click on an ordinary thing - like minimizing a
window - it will do absolutely nothing for 5-15 seconds and then will
suddenly minimize it. In other words, it does not GRADUALLY display
images or windows.

There do not appear to be unwanted programs running in the background
(I'm not sure how to be sure of this) - and there are no programs in
the Startup folder.

Besides the obvious use of antivirus and antispyware programs, is there
something else I could check for? Perhaps there is too little memory
in the computer?

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Malke - 31 Oct 2005 02:47 GMT

> My friend's computer is slow in a certain way. It loads web pages at
> a normal speed.
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> something else I could check for? Perhaps there is too little memory
> in the computer?

Here are my general malware removal steps:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

It can be worth it to go through them systematically, particularly
because just observing what is running isn't giving you a clue (and
there is always the possibility that the malware is hidden).

Once you've determined that the computer is 100% virus/malware-free,
here are a few more links to help track down slowness:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm
http://aumha.org/a/health.htm - Take Out the Trash (section 4)

Malke

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MS-MVP Windows User/Shell
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic"

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Richard Fangnail - 31 Oct 2005 20:04 GMT

That Kasparsky virus scanner only checks one file at a time.

The Trend Micro ran but was stuck at "File scanned: 0" for quite a
while.

The Symantec said it was loading a file that was 1.5M but it seemed to
be loading for far longer than it should take for that size.

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