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Post by roundboy on Oct 7, 2004 8:22:52 GMT
I'm running windows XP Home edition on a HP Pavilion PC. After booting up and without anything running other than Sygate Firewall and Norton anti-virus I have 43 processes running. Is this right?
I have been told by a colleague at work that there should be a lot less than this.
Is there somewhere I can find out what should be on my computer and what shouldn't?
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Post by NHH on Oct 7, 2004 12:08:23 GMT
Hi again... How many tasks you should have running all depends on what is installed on the PC, but 43 is definately too many to have running at once. As always you can check if any could be spyware/malware/trojans/viruses by scanning your PC with the Housecall Online Virus Scanner and Ad-Aware. If you also have lots of 'system tray' icons (next to the task-bar clock) then maybe you should set those particular programs to not start up with Windows (good examples being RealOne Player/Scheduler, WinAmp/WinAgent, Quicktime/qtrun). If you want to look up names of the processes, then you can look them up HERE. Let me know how you get on  |
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Post by roundboy on Oct 7, 2004 12:57:23 GMT
Hi Vin,
Cheers mate that looks like a useful site. I've been on and started to look at my processes and have found one that the site doesn't list and one I thought I had already deleted. It is listed in my processes as Webrates0.exe and also as Webrates1.exe. If I end the process it just reappears a second later. I deleted it using add/remove, this said it was removed and performed a system restart. When it rebooted, there it was again - it's a sodding virus isn't it?
How do I get rid of it?
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Post by NHH on Oct 7, 2004 13:10:46 GMT
That's definately spyware matey so as said before, scan your PC with the Housecall Online Virus Scanner on Nethomehelp's front page (on the right) to remove the trojan that is bringing back that program.
Then scan with Ad-Aware (available from the downloads page) to remove the rest of the spyware.
Another suggestion.... get rid of Norton AV.
Vin
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Post by roundboy on Oct 7, 2004 13:16:00 GMT
Hi Vin,
I ran Ad-Aware yesterday and also Spy-Bot and neither of them removed it. I'll run the online checker as you suggested and try it again. Cheers mate.
Regarding Norton AV. A lot of people say get rid of it but what should I replace it with?
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Post by NHH on Oct 7, 2004 17:22:03 GMT
The malware most likely retuned because a trojan on your system is replacing it. A scan with Housecall will get rid of the trojan. Avast! anti virus is free & more effective than Norton. It's on Nethomehelp's downloads page. |
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Post by roundboy on Oct 9, 2004 13:13:02 GMT
 I took your advice and got rid of Norton AV. The Online Virus check found the Trojans but couldn't get rid of them. So I looked at a problem that Big Jack was having and followed the recommendations that you gave to him. I switched off the system restore and did a boot check with Avast. It found loads of worms and viruses and trojans and was able to get rid of them - hooray!!!. My running processes have dropped from 43 to 35 and my system runs about 10x faster. Thanks Vin. One last question, can I switch system restore back on or should I leave it as it is?
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Post by NHH on Oct 9, 2004 15:16:56 GMT
Good to hear! Yes... disabling system restore was something I forgot to mention  It's good that you found the answer in another thread though On your System Restore query, System Restore is a very useful tool and can repair a lot of problems that can suddenly appear in a way that's relatively easily to carry out for the average user. Once you start to know how to maintain your PC yourself though, System Restore is a pretty redundant feature and serves only to take up unecessary disk space and to possibly lock viruses away from your AV program. As a result it's something I haven't used since Windows XP was released. The choice is yours.. Regards Vin |
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It's good that you found the answer in another thread though