Posted on 02/25/2012 9:46:12 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj
I've had more and more difficulties with accessing webpages (serious slowdown and pages freezing up) along with rapid bumping-off of being logged in to different websites (such as IMDb, eBay, etc.), for which I should be permanently logged in (or at least in eBay's case, for 24 hours). I go through maybe 5-10 pages or less and I get inexplicably knocked off. Again, it's not localized to just a few websites, but across the board. This computer is less than 2 years old, doesn't have a lot of memory used (or junk cluttering the system).
I have Kaspersky anti-virus and ran a scan, but it shows no viruses. I did a defrag and it was no help, and also a checkdisk scan at start-up, and that also did nothing to improve the situation.
Any ideas as to what is wrong with my computer ? I am stumped. Thanks.
Try Malwarebytes (free edition).
Check with your service provider to make sure your DNS settings haven’t been hijacked.
Try superantispyware free, and Malwarebytesantimalware, free.
Do quick scans with each and then do the deep scans.
Actually I would concentrate on the Superantispyware first.
Do you set the Kaspersky on it’s deepest scan version when you scan?
I do know AT&T DSL has been having trouble in our area.
How many different browsers have you tried?
Does the same thing happen in different browsers?
I had a very old computer and it was getting bogged down but I started using Chrome (it was faster) - then I have this new one and I still use Chrome - much faster than IE and FF.
Cool thing about chrome - you can right click at the top tabs and delete running programs with a quick task manager - I watch a bunch of videos and that slows down the puter.
I got a virus, one of those fake anti-virus ones... it was a borrowed computer. I downloaded something to kill it but it also killed some important files in the PC. I really bungled that one.
It wouldn’t let me add Malware Bytes, it should have been there before it.
I’ll give the Malwarebytes a run right now. And, yes, I do have Kaspersky set to full scan.
Comcast/Xfinity. Cable (wireless).
This slowdown has only been recent. I don’t use different browsers.
Could be your line is noisy or your router/ DSL modem is going bad. Check with your service provider first to run a diagnostic on your line. There should also be diagnostics you can run from the computer to check the router/modem.
Malwarebytes is excellent for cleaning up. For running protection, get rid of the heavy dinosaurs like Kaspersky, Symantec and the others and go with Avast.
I have several different browsers, even Safari athough it crashed my PC when I tried it.
Are we still supposed to run defrag??
I thought that went out with the invention of the Gigabyte. heh
You can always use a second computer to download it onto a flash drive, you can even change the name of it to fool the malware.
Are you using a wifi connection?
Have you refreshed your connection?
Your computer is new but how old is your router?
What browser are you using?
Just to compare notes, I just got a new computer after being bogged down with various virus and malware attacks. I had even installed Norton Antivirus to get rid of them, which seemed to work for a while, but I still periodically had problems associated with “svchost” (sic) I learned various ways out of an “attack”, such as returning to a checkpoint. To do this I would wait exactly six minutes after being hung on a “complete” notice in the boot, which usually just flashed by, then a screen would appear with the prompt to reload from a checkpoint. More recently I had had success with the “extreme patience” approach of clicking a button and waiting ten minutes or more for a prompt, to get through a shutdown, even though this took well over an hour. Finally, I did this and the boot failed anyway, and at the six minute timeout, a black screen appeared.
So, it was off to the store. I had saved some stuff on thumbnails, but I may attempt to access my old hard drive to copy all my user files onto my new TWO TERABYTE hard drive. I can’t get over that ... TWO TERABYTES.
I have been thinking about getting an old computer and running it without a hard drive using a Linux OS on a CD. No viruses and no tracking cookies, just turn it off and there is nothing saved.
I’m running the Malwarebytes scan at present, which will likely take some time to do. I had some difficulty getting it started, receiving the same types of error messages I get with looking at so many webpages (i.e. “page is not responding”).
Have seen that with XP when something is eating up a bunch of processor time or memory problems.
I am assuming you're running Win 7 since you said the machine is less than 2 years old.
Someone hacked into ours, so we pulled the plug on it for a few days and they went away.
If you’re on cable, I suggest having your modem replaced Monday morning. They only have a lifetime of 5 years, most of the time less.
Do you use passwords and high security settings?
I second your suggestion.
See if COMCAST has a support section on their website. If they do see if it has Known Issues or simular name and click on it. The problem could be on their end as easilly as yours. If you got the same frontal system we did the winds been murder the past 24 hours or more here. Most services have a section where they post any known service issues on their end.
I don’t use wi-fi but I got a router with the n, not the g technology and used it for a couple of weeks (will be using it later).
I tried to follow directions the first time and get as much security as I could in my set up, but it took me a couple of more efforts to really max it out, I had to google the issue, reread things a few times, but then I think I finally nailed it.
I taped my complicated password and information to the router itself, and to my screen.
My impression is that is as good as it can be according to my research on the internet.
http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/ Try this site. Up in the blue tabs at the top is Alerts. I can’t check for you because I do not have Comcast and it requires user log in.
Husband said whatever browser you are using, clear cache and cookies.
The router isn’t old, either. I use Internet Explorer 9.
Yes, Windows 7. The prior computer I used was XP and something started inexplicably eating up nearly all the memory. Took it for repairs and they said it wasn’t worth bothering with.
It’s possible. I’ve just got to rule out a virus. I’m an hour and a half into the Malwarebytes scan and it hasn’t found anything yet.
The modem was replaced just a few months ago.
I need to rule out the possibility of a virus, which is what I personally think it is. The situation has been worsening over the past month and appears exclusive to browsing (not weather related).
LOL, fun isn't it? As a guy who uses the computers that others discard for these reasons, I have spent days scanning before I can turn it into a usable/safe computer.
On my wife's Win 7 machine, it doesn't take more than 45 minutes to run a full scan.
It's a i7 quad core laptop with 6Gb of memory.
Do you know if you have an i3, i5, or i7 processor?
I'm just suspicious of the time it's taking to run the scan.
I don’t know what the processor is off the top of my head, but I know I don’t have 6Gb of memory. The scan is now at 2 hours, but it probably is running slowly. You can easily read out each individual part of the system it’s scanning. The Kaspersky ordinarily takes several hours to run as well. On the old computer, the last scan I ran with Webroot, it went over 13 hours.
I have a stupid question. Do you have any other programs running right now while scanning such as Windows media player or along that line?
Other than this window and a game of Solitaire, no.
Something is eating up process time or you are having big time memory problems is all I can think of right now.
Did you run Kaspersky *TDSSKiller* free and stand alone to make sure you didn't have any *rootkit* type of virus messing with the registry, these are very nasty.
For me (around2003) a Malwarebytes scan is about 3 hours.
Superantispyware is a little over 4 hours.
The processor on here is listed as AMD Athlon (tm) II P-320 Dual Core. Memory is shown as 241gb free out of 286gb. Other than their usual anti-virus, I don’t recall having run the TDSS Killer. I can try running that when this is done, but I have no idea how long this program is going to take (now at 2hrs, 45min — and still showing no objects detected).
It is taking anywhere from 1-4 seconds scanning literally every little background jpg. or whatnot on any given webpage. Unless I’m mistaken (and I do not profess to be a computer expert), there has got to be upwards of a million or perhaps tens of millions of possible individual items that may be in the system, and with having only looked at 84,000 in 2 hrs and 50 minutes, this scan could take days.
Dang, my old clunker Gateway must be really screaming, LOL.
When I run Malby, I have nothing else running, not even screen saver.
2 1/2 hours is normal for a full scan on C drive 32 Gb.
I don't usually scan the other partitioned drives on the primary drive or the secondary hard drive.
I figure if something is going to get you, it's going to get you on C.
On my wife's Win 7 machine, I scan the whole computer, both the primary SSD and the secondary hard drive because it just flies through it so fast, 45 minutes for everything.
What OS are you running? How much memory (RAM) do you have on your system?
I use a combination of AVG (free antivirus; excellent) and Malwarebytes; both can be obtained for free at www.download.com.
If you’re running Windows 7, you’d better have a bare minimum of 4GB of memory. Don’t even think about ever using IE. Use either Firefox or Chrome as your browser. Ensure your Windows updates are completely current, and......
Do what 90% of people or better NEVER do: keep your virus and malware definitions current. Such software can only protect you from what they know exist.
You may also consider running your first scans with those packages with the system booted up in Safe mode. Good luck.
It’s running so slowly, I was able to copy by hand one particular scanned file...
C:\Users\DJ\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5\U3Y3LOF8\imp[1].css
I mean, what is this junk ?
I think that's referring to disk space available on your hard drive.
The memory I'm talking about should be from 2Gb to 8Gb on a new machine, it's basically random access memory (on memory chips) so the computer is not dependent heavily on the disk page file (slow) system,(this is a basic, basic explanation). I would also recommend that you close all windows, Internet, games, etc. etc. and let Malwarebytes run by itself. Think that's how they recommend running it.
Installed memory: 3.00 GB (2.74 GB usable).
After your scan, run Task Manager and click on the Memory Tab to see which process are eating up your memory.
After that, try downloading and running FireFox to see of there is problem with your IE9.
Also, as a precaution, download HWMonitor to check your CPU temperatures. Your machine should be idling between 28C-42C depending on the cooler and CPU.
You could very easily have a CPU that is running hot because of hardened heat sink grease and that would really slow your system down as the CPU gets hotter..
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