[goldeneye]

Hi there,

I posted initially within the malware forum thinking my system may be infected but came to the conclusion it was not, they advised me to post here. My system is running at 97-100% proccessor usage without any real evidence to what it is making this happen when looking in taskman\processes. Here is my original post with more information and what I have done so far.....

Malware forum post

Thanks in advance for any advice

Gold

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goldeneye,

One thing I noted from the DSS log in your other thread was this:

Percentage of Memory in Use: 89% (more than 75%).
Total Physical Memory: 191 MiB (512 MiB recommended).

There is very little memory in this PC. If I recall correctly, the original specs for XP called for at least 256 Mb RAM, and even 512 Mb is going to be sluggish in a lot of instances. This isn't even at the bare minimum. If upgrading memory is an option, that would definitely be something to look at.

Also, I notice that AVG7 is the current anti-virus, but it appears that there are still some leftovers of Norton running. This can cause some conflicts and slowness as well.

However, I see evidence of a suspicious service in your log. I'd like to get that checked out. I will PM Rorschach112 and ask him to re-open your log and contact you when he has done so.

sari

[sari]

goldeneye,

One thing I noted from the DSS log in your other thread was this:

Percentage of Memory in Use: 89% (more than 75%).
Total Physical Memory: 191 MiB (512 MiB recommended).

There is very little memory in this PC. If I recall correctly, the original specs for XP called for at least 256 Mb RAM, and even 512 Mb is going to be sluggish in a lot of instances. This isn't even at the bare minimum. If upgrading memory is an option, that would definitely be something to look at.

Also, I notice that AVG7 is the current anti-virus, but it appears that there are still some leftovers of Norton running. This can cause some conflicts and slowness as well.

However, I see evidence of a suspicious service in your log. I'd like to get that checked out. I will PM Rorschach112 and ask him to re-open your log and contact you when he has done so.

sari

[goldeneye]

Hi Sari,

I also noticed this, but the strange thing here is that upon examination the machine has two 256mb DDR2 ram chips installed. Windows however is only registering 191mb of ram in use.....have you ever encoutered this, I can't say I have.

Regards

Callum

[sari]

It's possible that one has gone bad. It would appear from that that only one stick of RAM is being seen. What I would suggest is working with Rorschach112 first, and then when that issue is cleared up, come back here to address the memory issue. If you happen to have any of the same type of memory lying around, you could try replacing it and see what happens.

[goldeneye]

My thread with Rorschach112 has concluded that no viruses are present. It certainly does appear to be a memory issue, 191mb I suppose is what would be left of a 256mb chip shared with the graphics card. Is it possible that both are running at half speed........? I will test this by taking one out a time out and seeing if the machine still operates.

Also is there any reason why the machine would run perfectly fine in safe mode as if it did contain 512 but then grind to a halt in normal mode........?

[sari]

I've asked Rorschach to re-open your thread, as I believe there is something malicious present and it needs to be dealt with in the malware forum.

In safe mode, you only have very limited processes running. None of the protection programs or other programs that load art startup are running, greatly reducing the load on the PC.

[goldeneye]

.....If the machine still boots with just one ram chip in at a time, suggesting they are still both working, then I may try a reformat
Thanks for your help Sari

[happyrock]

a reformat is not necessary...get at least 1 stick of 512 MB of ram ...2 sticks of 512 is even better if your using a onboard video card that has to share the memory ...memory is cheap...
to see what ram you need...go here click on scan my system...and they will tell you what ram is compatible with your system...

[happyrock]

found this at your malwre thread...

I do apologise for wasting your time, but after discovering that one chip of ram was infact defect last night I reformatted the machine and it appears to be running very smoothly now

for the record...a reformat does not fix bad ram...