I have a job I started in Dec. for which I must evaluate 2 websites a minute for 4 hours at a time using IE7 as my browser. I'm working on a Dell Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz processor with Windows XP, SP2, 768 MB RAM on a DSL connection at home. My PC is connected to a wired router, to which my husband's computer is also connected.
My PC started working slowly in November, and now that I think about it in conjunction with posts I've read at this site, that's when I loaded a bunch of "free with rebate" software on it (notably Spysweeper and ZoneAlarm), and maybe they're conflicting with each other. In mid-Dec. I downloaded Spybot at my job's recommendation, and ran it after working each day. I took the PC in to a local shop in late Dec. for them to try to speed it up, and to advise me on which anti-spyware and antivirus software to use, and which to get rid of due to conflicts. It came back barely improved, but with a new hard drive because my original was failing. Then, in the past month or so, it's been locking up during my work because 100% of the CPU is used, and it is SO slow at loading pages that I grind to a halt. I've finally figured out that it's probably my computer, not anything with my job's software.
So, here's what I've tried, to solve the problem:
1) Ran msconfig and unchecked virtually everything at startup, including Spysweeper and ZoneAlarm. That sped it up a bit, so that my URL viewing rate increased from 80's/hr. to 100's/hr.
2) I uninstalled McAfee Viruscan Enterprise, which I'd downloaded for free about a month ago. That sped things up some more.
3) After step 2 (McAfee removal), I undid step 1, so I could be protected again by SS and ZA.
4) I downloaded Ad-Aware 2007 after reading on your site about removing a Trojan from another home computer I have.
5) I installed another 512 MB of RAM to see if that would help speed things up. Then just now I noticed that in the Properties for the computer, it still says it only has 768 MB RAM, not 768 + 512 as I would've expected (will address this in a separate Q).
6) I noticed tonight that the 100% CPU usage problem continued even AFTER I'd closed IE! vsmon.exe was using 97% of the resources. So I googled vsmon.exe and clicked on the 2nd result, which gave me ideas that I tried next, i.e. steps 7 and 8 as follows.
7) I shut off all 3 ZA email scanners (incoming, outgoing, and attachments) since I use Yahoo and only web-based email, and restarted my computer.
8) I checked to see where vsmon.exe was stored, to determine whether it was related to WORM_RBOT. The file seems to be in the right place and no duplicate is in the wrong place, so I don't think I have this worm.
What can you recommend to keep this from happening again, and "permanently" resolve this 100% CPU usage/lockup? At the times it's locking up, there are no other programs running on the computer, and just Microsoft Word 2007 and IE open.
Thanks! Screenshots are attached of Task Manager Performance and Processes.
Lesley
