General computer slowness/lag...

Welcome to Major Geeks!

Most people are under the very mistaken misconception that HijackThis is a scanning and detection tool. It is not! HijackThis is simply a tool that is used to identify browser hijackers and in some cases it will show entries for some malware that is for instance running at startup. A HijackThis log shows the following:

• a running process list with no reference to good or bad
• it lists the contents of a selected group of registry keys that is an an extremely small subset of the tens of thousands of keys that may exist. Again no reference to good or bad.
• and some of the above keys that are shown may show some non-Microsoft system services that are running. Again with no reference to good or bad.

The decision on what is good or bad is left a person with significant Windows and malware cleaning experience.

HijackThis does not come close to showing all malware that could be hiding on a PC. Anyone who has an infected computer and is relying on HijackThis without the benefit of running other scans such as Spybot, Windows Defender, BitDefender & Panda, CCleaner, etc. are more than likely still infected. In most cases, where there is one virus/trojan there are more.

The goal of this forum is to remove all malware, and this cannot be done properly by just seeing a HijackThis log.

You need to start by uninstall ALL but one antivirus since this is a major no no! And it will slow your PC down a lot.

Now if you wish to find out whether your PC has any malware, please follow our standard cleaning procedures which are necessary for us to provide you support. Also there are steps included for installing, renaming, running, and posting HijackThis logs as attachments.

• Run ALL the steps in this Sticky thread READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support
• Make sure you check version numbers and get all updates.
• Very Important: Make sure you tell us the results from running the tutorial...was anything found? Were you unable to complete any of the scans?...Were you unable to download any of the tools?...Did you do the on-line scans as suggested? etc.

• After doing ALL of the above you still have a problem make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below link to properly use HijackThis and attach a log:

Downloading, Installing, and Running HijackThis​

Make sure you also rename HijackThis.exe as suggested in the procedures. Use analyse.exe for the new name. This is very important due to some new infections going around.​

• When you return to make your next post, make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order too:
  • CounterSpy - only for Windows XP, 2K, & NT users
  • AVG Antispyware log - ONLY IF NEEDED you were not able to run CounterSpy. - only for Windows XP, 2K, & NT users
  • Bitdefender - from step 6
  • Panda Scan - from step 6
  • runkeys.txt - the log from GetRunKey.bat
  • newfiles.txt - the log from ShowNew.bat
  • HijackThis

NOTE: You can only attach 3 files in a single message so it will require that you use two messages to attach all of these logs!

 

You must uninstall Viewpoint Media Player as requested in step 0 of the READ ME.

You need to uninstall J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6 as requested in step 6 of the READ ME and then install the current version of Sun Java as requested in step 6. The link is given in step 6.

Your logs still show three antivirus programs:

• Yahoo's CA Antivirus (perhaps it is part of AT&T Yahoo! Applications)
• McAfee SecurityCenter
• Norton Security Center

You must uninstall all but one. This is probably the main reason your PC is slow.

Also you must renamed HijackThis as requeseted in step 7 of the READ ME. If you do not do this, certain forms of malware will not show in the log.

CCleaner did not work properly for you. Please download ATF Cleaner by Atribune. This program does not require an installation. The executable actually runs the program.

NOTE: This program is for Windows XP and Windows 2000 only. ATF Cleaner will remove all files from the items that are checked so if you have some cookies you'd like to save. Please move them to a different directory first.

• Double-click ATF-Cleaner.exe to run the program.
• Under Main choose: Select All
• Click the Empty Selected button.

If you use Firefox browser

• Click Firefox at the top and choose: Select All
• Click the Empty Selected button.
  • NOTE: If you would like to keep your saved passwords, please click No at the prompt.

If you use Opera browser

• Click Opera at the top and choose: Select All
• Click the Empty Selected button.
  • NOTE: If you would like to keep your saved passwords, please click No at the prompt.

Click Exit on the Main ATF Cleaner menu to close the program.

After doing the above, attach new logs from ShowNew and HJT.

 

You can also uninstall CounterSpy since we are finished with it and all it reported was cookies which are not problems.


How is your PC running now that you have uninstalled CounterSpy and McAfee and Norton? You should be seeing a difference.