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Cleaning a bad infestation of malware, virii, trojans, rootkits etc

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Should add that every Intel CPU since the Pentium 4 has speed stepping tied to thermals. If there is enough dust/cat dander/dog hair in the case to carpet the heatsink, the CPU will shut off half its cores AND/OR run at half speed (out of self-preservation). If your PC is significantly slower than it used to be, yet you're not getting the browser hijacks indicative of a virus, crack open the case and vacuum it out. Really important to do this every 6-9 months if you have pets or hardwood floors.
 
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I continue to have blue screening issues after going through and doing the registry cleaning and disk defrag. I ran the recommended malware and it blue screened three times now. It did get through a quick scan once and found no errors. I decided to go to the full scan and it blue screened on that. I find that it blue screens most times when I am in Firefox????

I did a full system copy to my portable HD and it even blue screened doing that. Fortunately I was able to get it copied over. I am considering doing a full system recovery, but would like to exhaust any other possibilities prior to that.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Edit:

For some reason, I really think that this is a browser issue. My work laptop which is on the same network has no issues at all. When I use my home pc it spins all the time in Firefox. I just tried Chrome and it is the same issue. My other apps don't seem to freeze up when utilizing unless my browser is open.
 
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buckeyebri;1996633; said:
I continue to have blue screening issues after going through and doing the registry cleaning and disk defrag. I ran the recommended malware and it blue screened three times now. It did get through a quick scan once and found no errors. I decided to go to the full scan and it blue screened on that. I find that it blue screens most times when I am in Firefox????

I did a full system copy to my portable HD and it even blue screened doing that. Fortunately I was able to get it copied over. I am considering doing a full system recovery, but would like to exhaust any other possibilities prior to that.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Edit:

For some reason, I really think that this is a browser issue. My work laptop which is on the same network has no issues at all. When I use my home pc it spins all the time in Firefox. I just tried Chrome and it is the same issue. My other apps don't seem to freeze up when utilizing unless my browser is open.
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It might be a motherboard issue. Had something similar happen to co-workers laptop, and turned out that part of the motherboard fried itself somehow.
 
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The virus that I had, the privacy protection virus was nasty. It disabled Trend Micro and all other spyware software on my admin account, it even disabled my internet connection. I was able to access the internet through my guest account, it didn't seem to have any effect there. I scanned with trend micro and malwarebytes but neither one of them found it. I finally scraped up the courage to look for it myself. I rebooted into safe mode, found where it was hiding on my computer, found it in the registry and deleted it. No sign of it now, I just hope it's not still lurking somewhere. I don't see it running in the task manager and my computer seems to be running fine. We'll see.
 
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DubCoffman62;2045361; said:
The virus that I had, the privacy protection virus was nasty. It disabled Trend Micro and all other spyware software on my admin account, it even disabled my internet connection. I was able to access the internet through my guest account, it didn't seem to have any effect there. I scanned with trend micro and malwarebytes but neither one of them found it. I finally scraped up the courage to look for it myself. I rebooted into safe mode, found where it was hiding on my computer, found it in the registry and deleted it. No sign of it now, I just hope it's not still lurking somewhere. I don't see it running in the task manager and my computer seems to be running fine. We'll see.
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Process Explorer from Microsoft's Windows Sysinternals site is a big help for diagnosing whether you've really removed malware. Far more powerful than Task Manager, and should still work in the event the malware has blasted taskmgr.exe from your PC.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533
 
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I'm beginning to regard System Mechanic as malware.

Start fucking around with the registry and all sorts of unintended consequences begin to crop up. On balance, I think the best malware removal tool is the purchase of a new PC every 3 years whether you want to or not.
 
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MaxBuck;2049307; said:
I'm beginning to regard System Mechanic as malware.

Start [censored]ing around with the registry and all sorts of unintended consequences begin to crop up. On balance, I think the best malware removal tool is the purchase of a new PC every 3 years whether you want to or not.
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You can get a good one for dirt cheap these days, that's probably the best route to go.
 
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My problem really isn't malware so much as ill-behaved commercial software that takes it upon itself to screw with my registry, and more especially in setting up processes that start up unbidden, accomplish nothing, and refuse to turn off. The Quickbooks program is one of the worst actors in this regard, along with Acrobat. And I'm very reliant on both these programs. System Mechanic started out being helpful but has turned into a CPU hog.
 
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MaxBuck;2052770; said:
My problem really isn't malware so much as ill-behaved commercial software that takes it upon itself to screw with my registry, and more especially in setting up processes that start up unbidden, accomplish nothing, and refuse to turn off. The Quickbooks program is one of the worst actors in this regard, along with Acrobat. And I'm very reliant on both these programs. System Mechanic started out being helpful but has turned into a CPU hog.
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Well then how about this. One computer for business, the other for porn. Problem solved.
 
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