Mysterious Web Surfing Slowdown

Discussion in 'Malware Help (A Specialist Will Reply)' started by trubacca, Oct 23, 2008.

  1. trubacca

    trubacca Private E-2

    Hello,
    Around the beginning of October I noticed that my desktop computer had lost it's responsiveness in regards to loading web pages. This is not (as much of) an issue while using my laptop, so I am concerned that I may have some malware hidden somewhere mucking up the works, with it sometimes taking over a minute to some pages. There is only one (known) variable that changed around the time I started noticing the problem.. I changed the firmware on my router (WRT54Gv4) from DD-WRTv23 to Tomato V1.21. Because I am not experiencing this problem on my laptop, I do not feel inclined to blame Tomato (Nevertheless, I am preparing to switch to DD-WRTv24 to see if it gets better). I experience the slowdown in both Opera 9.61 and Firefox 3.0.3, with Firefox being slightly more responsive despite the extra plug-ins (probably due to the ad-blocking). I haven't tried IE yet, but I doubt I would use it even if it did work better :)
    I have a Comcast 6Mb connection with my Tomato QoS on to speed up DNS and port 80 traffic, but it doesn't seem to help my poor desktop (or my girlfriend, the primary user). Furthermore, my download speeds are not affected, nor my speedtests.
    As a young Networking major, I will admit that this situation is a little.. emasculating.. and would appreciate both assistance in solving my issue as well as some assistance in understanding the situation and the deeper aspects of the steps that I am performing (teach a man to fish and so on..) so that others may benefit from my wisdom.
    All of my scans have turned up nothing, so I am not even sure if I should be here, but I know these things can be tricky, so I shall seek the advice of a professional. I followed the sticky to the best of my ability, so without further ado, I present the log files.
     

    Attached Files:

    trubacca, Oct 23, 2008
    #1
  2. trubacca

    trubacca Private E-2

    Oh. The logs will probably reflect this, but I use WinXP SP3, with spybot and Avast as my primary protection.
     

    Attached Files:

    trubacca, Oct 23, 2008
    #2
  3. trubacca

    trubacca Private E-2

    A new mystery is afoot, as one of the tools I have run seems to have killed my sound. Very strange. I am using an 8 year old Soundblaster Live card, that was working until a few hours ago. All of the drivers still seem to still be there.. no obvious answers. I didn't even realize until after I stopped working on the darn thing. I did a quick search in the forums to see if anyone else had this problem, but I am a little too drained to dredge through the results at the moment. I will work on it once my faculties recharge.. but I thought I would put it out there in case the cause is obvious.
    Also, it seems prudent to profusely thank in advance anyone who tries to help :) Thanks!
     
    trubacca, Oct 23, 2008
    #3
  4. trubacca

    trubacca Private E-2

    OK, It took me a second to fix, but I eventually reinstalled several drivers and it seemed to fix the sound issue. I will update if there are any further developments of that nature.
     
    trubacca, Oct 23, 2008
    #4
  5. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    Welcome to Major Geeks!

    I'm sorry but your problems are not due to malware as your logs are all clean. I suggest that you investigate software that you have installed and have running to see if you can find a relationship. Things to look at but I'm not saying are definitely a problem are
    Also I would research why the below Microsoft processes are running to see if they are causing you any problems. These are not normally running on most PCs.
    Code:
    mage Name                   PID Session Name     Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ====== ================ ======== ============
searchindexer.exe           1792 Console                 0     27,300 K
searchprotocolhost.exe      3892 Console                 0      7,788 K
searchfilterhost.exe        3356 Console                 0      4,488 K

    I can move this thread to the Software Forum for you if you wish to continue in this line of investigation. Just let me know. In the meantime, you should do the below to cleanup from running the READ & RUN ME.



    It is time to do our final steps:
    1. We recommed you keep SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for scanning/removal of malware. Unless you purchase them, they provide no protection. They do not use any significant amount of resources ( except a little disk space ) until you run a scan.
    2. If we had you use ComboFix, uninstall ComboFix (This uninstall will only work as written if you installed ComboFix on your Desktop like we requested.)
      • Click START then RUN and enter the below into the run box and then click OK. Note the quotes are required
      • "%userprofile%\Desktop\combofix" /u
        • Notes: The space between the combofix" and the /u, it must be there.
        • This will uninstall ComboFix and also reset hidden files and folders settings back to Windows defaults.
      • Delete the C:\combofix folder from combofix (if it exists)
    3. Any other miscellaneous tools we may have had you install or download can be uninstalled and deleted.
    4. If running Vista, it is time to make sure you have reenabled UAC by double clicking on the C:\MGtools\enableUAC.reg file and allowing it to be added to the registry.
    5. Go to add/remove programs and uninstall HijackThis.
    6. You can delete the C:\MGtools folder and the C:\MGtools.exe file. You can also delete the C:\MGlogs.zip
    7. After doing the above, you should work thru the below link:
     
    chaslang, Oct 24, 2008
    #5
  6. trubacca

    trubacca Private E-2

    Thank you very much for your time. I will investigate those markers you indicated, and if I am still having difficulty then I will post a new thread myself in the proper forum. I am relieved to know that the computer is clean. Again, thanks for checking out those logs for me, I will do my best to "pay it forward"
     
    trubacca, Oct 24, 2008
    #6
  7. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    You're welcome. Surf safely!
     
    chaslang, Oct 25, 2008
    #7

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