# Was It a Virus?



## Tango (Aug 19, 2002)

Yesterday my laptop died. It was so incredibly slow all morning , then I couldn't turn it off, so I removed the battery. When I went to reboot, it almost took FOREVER :grump: Norton 2007 took 3.5 hours to scan files. Found nothing. I tried to restore to an earlier save. It announced it could not. Couldn't wait forever, so I turned it off. Today I thought I'd remove all my files (photos and word docs) to send laptop off to a friend. No documents. No photos. The start up menu reminds me of when it was brand new. It is running fine now but all my files have disappeared. The program files are still there. A lot of information like isp connection, Outlook connectin settings, and Outlook inbox, have also vanished. Norton is updated and was working fine. Can someone explain what happened?


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## gccrook (Nov 21, 2003)

Yes, Norton is a virus. Norton is the very first software I remove from any new computer. Not sure exactly what happened to yours, but a virus could have cleaned off your stuff. It sounds however, more like a reimage was done for some reason.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

ROFL! That's what I was gonna say! 

Either Norton REALLY screwed up, or your system got reimaged. Do you have Norton Ghost on your computer?


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Could have been Norton, or you could have just run low on memory. You didn't say how much memory you have or which operating system you use.


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

gccrook said:


> Yes, Norton is a virus. Norton is the very first software I remove from any new computer. QUOTE]
> And the First thing I do on a brand new computer is Remove Mcaffee. and put on Norton, Norton SystemWorks that is, been doing this now for the last 10+ years. And even had Norton on Apples and Macs for 6 years prior to that.


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## morrowsmowers (Jun 14, 2004)

I have never had Norton work properly on any of our computers and so I remove it if it comes on a new computer. Also removed McAffee from one computer as it wanted to work but refused to let me register or update. I have used AVG in the past but now I use Avast! and have never had a problem.

Ken in Glassboro, NJ


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

arabian knight said:


> And the First thing I do on a brand new computer is Remove Mcaffee. and put on Norton, Norton SystemWorks that is, been doing this now for the last 10+ years. And even had Norton on Apples and Macs for 6 years prior to that.


And you're the ONE regular user I can think of that says they've never had problems. I'm glad for you, but hundreds of thousands of people, as well as many computing mags, say differently. It's not just about 'conflicts' and such. It's also about HOW they run on computers. My dad's computer used to take TEN MINUTES to start up with Norton Systemworks loaded. It was no slow computer, either (2.4GHz, 768MB RAM, 80GB 7200 RPM HD).

Once I removed it, and installed separate programs that did the same thing that systemworks did, it only took about 2.5 to 3 minutes.

NOW.....this being said, I like SYMANTEC Antivirus. But then again, that's a different product (slimmed down, corporate, no fluff, etc.)


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## Tango (Aug 19, 2002)

Norton has been on the laptop since I bought it but this version was purchased on CD for the 3 computers here. They all run it and it has worked fine since December. I know something happened but it was prior to running the virus scan. The first couple of reboots gave me nothing but a blank screen (XP home edition). Wouldn't a memory problem indicate itself? A computer can just run out of memory and dump out all files to restore itself? Personally I would think if not a virus it was an MS update gone awry. Seems like a whole lot of updates and patches lately. I turned off automatic updates on this desktop right away. (running a little faster after visiting the silly dog link Kung). There's a little file previously unkown to me with a very long numerical/ alphabetical name.


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## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

Microsoft updates HARDLY EVER cause problems like that. I have always had my automatic updates on and have never had one problem with them. and I'm running XP PRO on 256megs of ram.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

14yearpcmaker said:


> Microsoft updates HARDLY EVER cause problems like that. I have always had my automatic updates on and have never had one problem with them. and I'm running XP PRO on 256megs of ram.


Actually there is an issue with automatic updates, but it's not a memory problem. Svchost.exe maxes out the cpu usage. You can check your cpu and memory usage by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the task manager. The Performance tab gives you a summary and trend logs, and the Processes tab gives you detailed information about resource usage of the individual processes.

My machine does that. I turned off automatic updates and just do updates manually once a month or so. I started a thread about it in this forum once but we never got to the bottom of it. I think the forum consensus was that the problem of svchost.exe maxing out my cpu usage was a behavioral problem on my part.
:stars:

Microsoft is aware of the issue. They have a few fixes that help some people but not others, so they recommend just turning off automatic updates if none of the fixes work. The machine is basically unusable for long period of time due to this issue if automatic updates aren't disabled.

[ame]http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-17,GGLG:en&q=automatic+updates+Svchost%2eexe+cpu+usage[/ame]


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## Tango (Aug 19, 2002)

I'm running XP Pro on this one with 256 mg of Ram as well. The laptop has 256 mg of ram with XP Home. I'm familiar with the task manager screen and never saw an indication that I was running out of memory or that the cpu usage was spiking. Suddenly I have a reconfigured to out-of-the-box laptop with no explanation. That is hardly surprising...


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Tango said:


> I'm familiar with the task manager screen and never saw an indication that I was running out of memory or that the cpu usage was spiking.


Did you look at the task manager when the machine was in slow motion?


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## 14yearpcmaker (Mar 11, 2007)

I just ran an update scan directly from the MS website, and auto updates were also on...cpu never maxed out once...ram never maxed out. I always keep automatic updates on, and never have one problem with them.


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