Slow Computer

[KMFDM]

Well for about the past week and a half my computer has been going extra slow, and when I go to The System Monitor it says im using 100% of the processor usage. I havent installed anything for a long long time and i still have about 10gb left in my harddrive. I just wanted to know whats causing this and how i could try to stop it

[RWSchlatter]

Suspected: possibly some ugly software using up your CPU cycles.

Case (1) trojan. Are you current with your anti-virus software, did you recently run a full disk / all files scan with it ?
Case (2) script. Virus-like, may have been introduced with HTML-formatted mail in Outlook Express, if you haven't followed Microsofts advise to secure your copy of OE.
Case (2) you have visited an internet site and this has managed to drop some AdWare on your machine.

First disable the WSH batch interface. In your system directory and subfolders search for WScript.exe and CSript.exe. If found, don't delete (you may want to use scripting) but rename to something else. Restart the machine and see if if your load drops now.

Anyhow, check on all the Run / RunService keys in the registry at both HKLM and HKCU, and see if you can find some program started, that you cannot remember to have installed.

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Regards - Richard