Mysterious CPU slowness

cj iwakura

My gf's cpu is running abnormally slow after she used some random Mp4-Mp3 conversion website. I checked the task manager and programs in safe mode and everything seems normal, but the Windows Security was turned off and won't let it be enabled. Is it possible she got some malware from this site?

Already uninstalled and reinstalled the browser as well as checked the temp files, no dice. And there's no system restore points prior to 8/4. The cpu just locks up then eventually becomes clear after a couple minutes.

She just ran a Malware Bytes scan and it came up clean. She thinks Kaspersky could be part of the cause(which came with it), but I doubt it's that bad. Any thoughts?

I can get the specs if needed. It's a fairly high-end laptop, running on Win7.

Platy

cj iwakura wrote:

the Windows Security was turned off and won't let it be enabled

I think this is normal while using Kaspersky Internet Security.

You might want to monitor the CPU temperature.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Hmm. Doesn't sound good.

Because I'm paranoid about these things, I'd do a format and reinstall.

Platy

The CPU locking up sounds like a temperature problem to me. Which might also have physical causes. I had a similar problem a while ago.

cj iwakura

Even though it happened after using that site? Malware alarms are going off for me.

Platy

Checking and monitoring your computer's temperature is really easy and could potentially tell you a lot.

tinwhiskers

It is possible the file conversion did break some latent defect in the CPU. It's pretty rare for websurfing/watching netflix use computers to ever really run the CPU at max, but that's pretty much what various encoding programs do.

I'd burn a ubuntu boot disk and see if when you boot into it the CPU issues are still there. If they are it pretty likely to be a hardware issue(get some canned air and clean it). If they go away is almost assuredly some kind of virus/spyware crap.

Skeith

I use this program to monitor stuff like CPU temp. The problem could be malware, but you're better off checking if it's a hardware issue before you do something like reformatting the hard drive.

cj iwakura

We're pretty much on the verge of the 'nuke it from orbit' route, but I'm trying everything in my power to avoid it. After cleaning some stuff up in safe mode, I got Firefox to run, but it still crashed pretty quick.

I've never even run Ubuntu before, but it sounds viable.

cj iwakura

Skeith wrote: »

I use this program to monitor stuff like CPU temp. The problem could be malware, but you're better off checking if it's a hardware issue before you do something like reformatting the hard drive.

As far as I can tell it seems normal. 35°C.

The browser runs a lot better in safe mode after I manually removed Kaspersky and some extraneous software.\

Got half of Speccy's findings as 'Cannot initialize SPC.dll' for my trouble.

cj iwakura

Solved, sort of. It's Silverlight. Uninstalled it and it ran fine, reinstalled and the slowness came back.