[jaytea44]

Woke up this morning and my laptop was massively slow (It's one of these tiny toshiba lifebooks). Mouse was choppy, first thing I noticed. Did a hard restart, suspecting virus, windows logon took 15 minutes (up from maybe 2). Subsequent normal restarts did not fix the problem. One big thing I noticed is that the "System" process, which usually is using 90-100 mb of memory now uses only about 400k-1mb. That might explain why the mouse, keyboard, any USB device, or any hard drive/data transfer activity are super slow. I suspect foul play, as it was left on all night connected to the interwebs. Only other cause I can think of besides hardware failure (Bad HD*) is fragmentation, apparently it is up to 45%. I know lol, I got lazy about defragging. Could it be possible that the files relating to the system have become so fragmented they can not load? Or is it more likely a virus or intruder wiped out those system files? Probably will just end up reinstalling the OS to factory settings anyway, but I'm pretty curious and would rather not go to the trouble right now. Thxbai!

[flavallee]

Right-click MY COMPUTER, then click Properties.

Submit what's listed in the Computer: section at the bottom of the "General" tab - exactly as you see it there.

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Click Start - Run, then type in

%temp%

and then click OK.

Click Start - Run, then type in

c:\windows\temp

and then click OK.

Once those 2 temp folders appear and you can view their contents, select and delete EVERYTHING that's inside them.

If a few files resist being deleted, that's normal behavior. Leave them alone and delete EVERYTHING else.

If a massive number of files are being deleted, the computer may appear to "hang". Be patient and wait for the deletion process to finish.

After it's done, restart the computer.

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Go here and click the green "Download latest version" link to download and save HiJackThis 2.0.4

After it's been downloaded and saved, close all open windows first, then double-click the saved file to install it.

Allow it to install in its default location - C:\Program Files.

After it's been installed, start it and allow its main window to load.

Uncheck "Do not show this window when I start HiJackThis".

Click "Do a system scan and save a log file".

When the scan is finished in 30 - 60 seconds, a log file will appear.

Save that log file.

Return here to your thread, then copy-and-paste the entire log file here.

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[jaytea44]

Cheers flavalee, I had already cleared my temp folders about a week before this happened actually. I just opted to reinstall, needed to do it anyway and less effort. I've got my whole file structure on an external HD cause I know how easily and quickly windows crashes, knew there might be a problem so didn't log into any accounts etc. I'm going to leave the thread open though in case others have a similar problem, I'm curious if this is a common hack side-effect.

Another sort of unrelated question though, some windows update files appeared on my external HD yesterday, in the root directory. They include a hotfix installer and two "KB[etc]" installers. The creation date is months ago, which I don't like. From searching the KB number they seem to relate to security updates to the .net framework. This concerns me a little because if the machine I was backing up from was compromised I wonder if something may have migrated to the external drive. Any thoughts?

[jaytea44]

Oh yeah, and it won't let me delete that folder, which I also don't like lol.

[flavallee]

A clean reinstall is sometimes the best option.

I've never owned or used an external hard drive, so I can't really address any issues with them.

It shouldn't be connected to the computer anyway while you're doing a clean reinstall.

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