Okay, need help!

[Blorx]

Okay, so I'm experiencing major computer slowdown. Things are taking 5x as long to load, especially games and games themselves are running at about half the speed they used to just yesterday.

I haven't downloaded anything new over the time, but some time during the day, I had an issue where the computer went to shut off the monitor, but screwed up and the monitor came back on, all of my desktop icons disappeared and some "presentation settings" were activated. Since then, I've been noticing the slowdown, but I checked presentation settings and they're off, my desktop icons have since been restored and for some reason, now the presentation mode icon shows up in the taskbar and disappears each startup.

I have Trend Micro Antivirus and I've already done a quick scan, which only turned up with cookies needing deleted.

I also defragmented my hard drive, deleted all temporary files, cleared my internet cache, made sure my graphics card driver was up to date, updated Windows, installed Vista Service Pack 2 and even tried turning off both Xfire and my antivirus software during games.

So far, the only consistent problem I've noticed is that no matter the game, when I launch it, my CPU ends up maxed at 100% and the game lags. However, when outside of games, it maxes at about 9% and most things work fine with some load times having been increased. RAM stays consistent with where it should be.

Just to give you an idea of how bad it is, here are my system specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
2.13 GHz Dual Core Processor
nVidia GeForce 9800M GS
4 GB RAM

and WolfTeam lags! WOLFTEAM!!! Clocked at 100% CPU usage!

I'll try doing a full scan with the antivirus software tonight. I don't know if it'll turn anything up though.

Also worth noting that none of the formatting here on the forum is working for me...

[TheBigCheese]

It's probably a virus.

Otherwise I'd go through this list:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips ... ngly-fast/

[Blorx]

Okay, going to go ahead and do a full scan. I just think it's pathetic, as I've had the computer less than a month, it's an ASUS Gaming Republic laptop and it was bought from Best Buy's Outlet Store on eBay and has all sorts of stuff put on it by the Geek Squad, as well as Best Buy made for security...

Normally, I'd think all that crap was the problem, but as I've said, it's been almost a month and no issues occurred until now.

[Blorx]

A full system scan detected a backdoor Trojan which was then deleted. Any advice on how to figure out what it changed and how to set it back is appreciated. I think this was probably what was causing my issues.

Here's a screenie of my system processes before removal of the backdoor Trojan:
i10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/Blorx/tm1.jpg
i10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/Blorx/tm2.jpg
i10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/Blorx/tm3.jpg

If anyone can tell me what needs taken care of on that list, I'd greatly appreciate it.

It's worth noting that the whole time I was typing the message, CPU usage would skip around between 10, 20, 50, and a few times even 70%. System idle processes wanted to jump around between 70 and 100 of the CPU apparently.

In any case, I think it was changing settings on my computer which were screwing up my performance. TBC, I'm going to follow the 99 ways list.

I'm assuming that list will cover most things that could have been changed. I still wouldn't mind optimization advice though.

[Fournine]

and has all sorts of stuff put on it by the Geek Squad

Well, there's your problem.

In all seriousness, while I've heard all kinds of horror stories about Geek Squad (downloading customer personal files and porn stashes, for example), I don't really know much more about the business or their trustworthiness and cannot make a definitive statement of their services.
However, I much prefer to know intimately every change, update, program, file, and setting on my computer, doing things myself and deferring only to my programming artisan father for problems beyond my understanding or ability to research on.

[Armored Wolf]

and has all sorts of stuff put on it by the Geek Squad

Well, there's your problem.

In all seriousness, while I've heard all kinds of horror stories about Geek Squad (downloading customer personal files and porn stashes, for example), I don't really know much more about the business or their trustworthiness and cannot make a definitive statement of their services.
However, I much prefer to know intimately every change, update, program, file, and setting on my computer, doing things myself and deferring only to my programming artisan father for problems beyond my understanding or ability to research on.

The sarcasm tag wasn't a big joke? You were actually serious?

[Blorx]

I got one guy telling me on another forum that it could have been a Windows update slowing it down. What are the chances of that?

[Armored Wolf]

High. More so if it's XP, but you said it was Vista. I have had no experience with Vista slowing down, but hey, Windows did it before it can do it again.

Get an iPad, that will fix it

[tokage]

I got one guy telling me on another forum that it could have been a Windows update slowing it down. What are the chances of that?

Well, seeing that you had a backdoor trojan, and therefore possibly all kinds of malware, chances are pretty slim that it was only the windows update. Maybe the windows update tried to remove the viruses, but it didn't work and that's were your slowdown comes from.

Sorry, don't have much advice, but the only way to surely know, that there is no malware left is to format the disk and reinstall. You could also use hijackThis or a similar tool and then ask for help on forums specialized for that.

[Blorx]

Okay, without anything running except the anti-virus software and background processes, I've got it down to the usual 7%-ish CPU and 30% RAM.

However, I'm still experiencing the bad load times and games are still lagging in places they didn't before. Not as bad, but still noticeably.

[Blorx]

Posted on a HijackThis forum. Awaiting reply to the logs.

[Uberpwn_w00t]

Something to this effect happened on one of my computers once. Sucked pretty bad. Good luck, man.

[Blorx]

I've been given the advice to just wipe it and start clean. Seeing as it's a new computer and nothing personal is here yet, I may take the advice.

[Uberpwn_w00t]

That's pretty much what we did. I advise you to take the advice.