I know, I know. Get a Mac. But read on, please!

[Orrex]

For the past few days my PC has been experiencing significant lag. A great many functions that used to happen in two or three seconds now take 45 seconds or more. Most webpages are noticeably slower, as well.

I imagine that we've picked up a virus or some piece of spyware, but what to do about it?

I ran SpyBot yesterday, and it found (and allegedly deleted) a spyware program called Win32 something or other. I ran Norton Antivirus today, and it found (and deleted) a tracking cookie.

Still, the system is annoying bogged down. What's my next step?


A full system restore would be problematic, so I'd prefer a suggestion that doesn't entail starting over from scratch.


Thanks for your insights!

[Tom Kitten]

1. my PC runs slow too

What I didn't know when I bought my computer is you have to re-up and pay these antivirus people money each year, plus they get to pop up randomly and remind you! I've had open programs screwed up because of their arbitrary warning update or else notices popping up! And they want money in order to fix it, but they realy won't.

[LeftyMom]

2. Norton is kinda crap, I wouldn't count on it to check you for viruses.

And while SpyBot is okay, it's definitely imperfect so I would run it in combination with another program to make sure you catch everything. I know it's missed stuff on my computer that AdAware catches and vice versa.

My suggestion would be to download the free version of AVG and do a second virus scan, and to add a second malware detector in addition to spybot, of which there are several good free ones but I'm not sure which is the going reccomendation. I'm sure somebody will chime in.

[flvegan]

3. Malwarebytes.

Learn it, live it, love it.

[meegbear]

7. An excellent piece of software

:thumbsup:

[Deja Q]

4. Get a quad core system.

That way, the malware will only usurp 24% of system resources and you won't notice or care about the difference in speed. :evilgrin:

Oh, okay:

Task manager will reveal resource usurping apps...

As does the registry - startup variables will be placed there.

Of course, many forms of malware are very difficult to remove. And given Windows' registry and other factors, refreshing (reinstalling) the OS every 18~24 months is for the best anyway. I did that. That's why I prefer Linux or, better yet, a decent Mac...

[hobbit709]

5. Step 1: Get rid of Norton

2. Download and install AVG, Malwarebytes Antimalware and latest version of Spybot.
3. Turn OFF System Restore
4. Run scans with all of the above
5. Reboot system
6. Run scans again and if clean, turn System Restore back on
7. Find out what all is in your startup manager and turn off most of the crap. I use Advanced System Care by IOBit.

[BlueJazz]

6. What Fivegan and hobbit709 said.

[Orsino]

8. After you've gotten rid of Norton, install Norton.

Get rid of the Norton Antivirus, that is, and install Norton Utilities. The latter package lets you clean up your registry, your start-up, and your hard disks. You may be way overdue for defragging, though that alone is not likely to account for the enormous lag you're living with.

You want a real antivirus protecting you. I think highly of Bit Defender and Trend Micro. I don't know what Norton Antivirus' problem is, but some applications you actually need to run get tagged as viruses themselves, and you can never get access to them again without a full system nuking.

Some viruses and worms are so pernicious, though, that the best plan of action is a reinstallation of your OS--with an antivirus installation immediately following.

[mwooldri]

9. Excellent advice above... but if you have enough disk space,

get an install of some form of Linux on your machine.

If Windows goes down then you can use the PC in Linux mode until you get around to sorting out the Windows problem.

Failing that, find a nice live-CD version of Linux to have as a standby when things go wrong.

Mark.

[HopeHoops]

10. Windows suffers systematic decay over time - very version has.

Since you mentioned web browsing, try clearing your private data (cache, session cookies, etc.) since there is a lot of overhead involved in maintaining all of those files. That typically speeds up all of the browsers.

As for viruses, while initially they tended to be either malicious or silly, most of them now are for commercial purposes wherein they take over enough control of your machine that they can spend time looking for other vulnerable machines or just happily blast away large volumes of SPAM e-mail. Those are pretty easy to spot because the network traffic light on the router and DSL/cable modem will be rapid and frequent when you aren't doing anything.

[lildreamer316]

11. !) Get CCleaner and run it.2) Malwarebytes

and then run your other programs again. If you really must keep Norton that's fine; but I second the suggestion to get rid of it and try Avast or maybe AVG or something highly rec'd like that.

[NewJeffCT]

12. My old iMac got slower & slower over time as well

so, it's not unique to PCs.

and, when my iMac died after less than 2 years, it would have cost $900 to fix.

[City of Mills]

13. Just to let you know

If you run a tool and it reports an infection from W32.Somekindofvirus, it would be much easier to troubleshoot and get you help if you actually write down that exact name and include that in your writeup... "Win32 something or other" is not very helpful, as there are thousands of viruses flagged by the various antivirus products as Win32.<virus name>. Again, not being snarky, just a helpful suggestion!

[Orrex]

17. I know--I should have written it down

I was thinking that it wasn't terribly relevant since the removal of Win32-whatever didn't visibly improve the situation.

I'll dig up the SpyBot report and see if I can find the actual name.

[av8rdave]

14. How full is your hard drive?

My Vaio started behaving just like that when the hard drive started getting close to full.

Just a thought...

[Orrex]

16. A valid question--I should have specified

I've got about 140G out of 225G free.

[Dogtown]

15. I've used Registry Mechanic w/ good results

NOT a particularly deft computer user, so more expert persons may challenge me successfully.

I was experiencing considerable slow-down, and tried several things before I stumbled on Registry mechanic:
http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/?ref=afl_nenextech

$30 for a download that will scan for and repair registry errors. Weekly scans seem to keep my Home Version Vista working as well as it ever will.

There are other software packages out there that perform as well, and there might even be some shareware programs available.

[Orrex]

18. A follow-up!

This morning I got a very fleeting error message that indicated some kind of problem with Flash9f.ocx. I don't know a whole lot about that specific program, though I know what Flash does, so on a whim I went into my IE Add-Ons and disabled it.

Now my system runs about 10x faster than yesterday, with the only exception being that I now get frequent message boxes telling me that this or that web page is trying to use the disabled Add-On.


Does this clarify things at all, or is it only a further symptom? Is it even related? That is, might it be a simple coincidence?