Newb With Antivirus 2009 Problems....

[ant_8u]

Hi Guys

First off may I start by saying I have very little computer knowledge, so I may get things mixed up but please bear with me, your help is greatly appreciated

My sisters laptop has just got the Antivirus 2009 on it
I've read a bit about it and done a few searches but can't find anything quite the same as the problems she's having

In normal mode the desktop icons and start bar have disappeared
I can eventually get the task manager to open but it's really slow
The CPU is always at 100% even though it's not doing anything
The mouse/touchpad is disabled

I can restart the computer in safemode and everything appears to be there
But once again the mouse is disabled and the CPU is at 100%

I have used another computer to download and save Malwarebytes onto an external hard drive
I then connected the hard drive to the laptop and tried to run it but it does nothing as the CPU is already at 100%

From what I have read it looks like I can solve the problem my running Malwarebytes and ccleaner etc... but I am unable to do this as I cannot move the mouse or get the CPU down from 100%

I spoke to the guys at PC world today as I'd given up - But when they said they'd charge £150 to format/ system restore the thing I though I'd give it another go again myself

I hope i've done a good enough job to explain things - like i said i'm really new to this and don't have a great understanding

Can I enable the mouse and reduce the CPU usage in order to run malwarebytes, or is there more to it than that?

Thanks in advance

 

[johnb35]

Have you tried stopping the process that is using 100% of the cpu? Ccleaner won't do anything for the infection, but it will clean up your old temp files and such. However, you do need to run the Malwarebytes program somehow and then use hijackthis to scan the system and then post both logs so we can take a look at them. Try finding out what process is taking up the cpu and try killing it using taskmanager and see if it comes back. If that don't work, go into msconfig and uncheck everything you don't need running and reboot. AV2009 will be one of the entries but even though you uncheck it, it will still start up. Post back and let us know the results. Get Malwarebytes and hijackthis from this thread, follow the instructions.

 

[ant_8u]

Thanks for the quick reply John
Give me a couple of minutes and I'll tell you what processes are taking up the CPU

 

[ant_8u]

Ok - I've restarted it in Safemode
The process taking up the CPU is services.exe

I have two services.exe showing - one is 3,998k at 0%
the other is 4,956k at 99%

Earlier hte CPU was 50% explorer.exe and 50% services.exe
Now it's just services.exe that's eating everything

I looked at msconfig and unchecked av2009

 

[TFT]

Right click the services.exe taking up your CPU resources and choose "end process". If it's the wrong one just reboot and try again. If you can then get the logs up as John says.

 

[ant_8u]

I can't click on anything as the touchpad/mouse doesn't work - I can however use the arrow, tab, del keys etc....

I tried "end process" on both services.exe - both tell me "this is a critical system process. Task Manager cannot end this process."

 

[ant_8u]

I have just restarted in normal mode
winlogon.exe takes up 98% CPU now

 

[johnb35]

Have you tried the msconfig utility to stop all processes from starting at bootup?

 

[ant_8u]

I'll give it a try now and see what happens

 

[ant_8u]

Does it make any difference if I log in as Administrator or General?

 

[ant_8u]

I went into msconfig and disabled everything from start-up
Restarted in safemode, everything remains disabled - but i now have....

services
svchost
services
svchost
userinit

should I disable these too and restart?

 

[johnb35]

Most likely not.

Thats weird, my reply was supposed to be for your reply of this...

Does it make any difference if I log in as Administrator or General? Must have been a delay in posting.

 

[ant_8u]

Ok - So now I've disabled the other items what should I do?

I restarted in Normal mode and there was no difference
I restared in Safe mode and there was no difference
CPU still shows 100% usage

The laptop doesn't seem to recognise that an external hard drive is connected either
Is this normal? - I saved Malwarebytes to an external drive from another computer as I cannot access the internet from safe mode to download it - I was hoping I could run it from the external drive but it doesn't seem to appear

When I try to restart in safe mode with networking I get as far as logging on as Administrator, but then the screen appears black (safe mode text appears - but the screen is blank)

 

[johnb35]

At this point, unless Ceewi1 can help you out, I would just recommend do a full format and reinstall windows. I'll PM him but he won't be on until late tonight.

 

[ant_8u]

Thank you for your help so far John - very much appreciated

 

[ant_8u]

Should the laptop be able to recognise the external harddrive even in safe mode?
And how can I get the touchpad activated again?

 

[johnb35]

You should be able to activate it either in bios or a setting within windows. As far as usb devices in safe mode, sometimes they get disabled in safe mode. I've PM'd Ceewi1 and you should have a response from him between 2-3AM in the morning.

 

[lawson_jl]

DO NOT FORMAT AND REINSTALL unless you want your sister to loose everything on the computer. What you need to do is to take the laptop to a trusted local computer tech. This issue can be solved pretty easily by a computer tech, but is often beyond what a new user can do.

 

[ant_8u]

Cool, thanks John
2-3am is crazy! - What do you guys do for a living?

In the meantime, I just enabled everything in msconfig to see if there was something there for the touchpad but that didn't make any difference

 

[ant_8u]

Hi Lawson - If I lose everything she won't be too happy!! - She's got lots of pics of her 8 month old baby on there

If I copied everything to the external drive would this solve the problem?
Just copy the files that are to be kept then format and reinstall?