Computer slowing down and mouse flickering

stphnstevey

Can anyone help please! My computer has recently:

- Started to go slow. Hard to use mouse as it sort of jumps around screen one using it and difficult to make selections
- Mouse keeps flicking between hour glass and normal cursor (as if it is busy). The light flickers on the tower unit at the same time

This only happens when I am connected to the internet (no problem one not connected). As it's hard to select things with the mouse (ie. the mouse is being slowed down and it jerks around the screen).

I intially thought it was the mouse, so cleaned it all up, but still the same problem. Also, mouse is fine when not connected to internet.

Moved onto seeing if it a virus. I have Norton Internet Security and Antivirus. It did flick up that it had found a downloader when I was browsing which was automatically deleted. A ran a virus scan with no problems found.

I then ran AdAware, Yahoo Antispyware and Spybot (which normally picks up anything Norton misses) but it only found a few tracking cookies.

Tried MSConfig to see if anything is running at startup that shouldn't be. Nothing there.

Tried looking through the registry in the Microsoft/windows/run thingy and nothing unusual there either.

Finally looked on my C Drive and windows and System folders to see if anything obvious or new downloaded there, but nothing.

The modem is working fine on another computer and is still saying the same speed.

I have got the feeling a virus is using my interent connection and that is slowing down the whole computer. I did go on https://www.alexa.com recently and something flashed up in less than a second. But I can't find it!!!:eek:

So I still have the problem and it has got so annoying that I get so angry with the mouse I can't use that computer.:mad:

ANY IDEAS????

albertross_2

These will identify what is happening under the hood when it goes slow.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html
http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/autoruns.html
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

you can also use the built-in task manager to see if a process is hogging the cpu when it goes slow.

How much ram, dial-up or broadband? Is it patched https://www.windowsupdate.com?

Browntoa

I would follow steps 1 to 4 of this malware thread

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=133269

then if it's still as bad post a hijackthis log as it tells you in the thread

you PC may be silently spamming emails etc in the background

stphnstevey

I'm running on Windows Millenium edition still - so alot of the Malware thread didn't work.

However the Filemon below was excellent, installed very quickly and took up next to no space. I could see that the wuauboot (which I thinks for the windows update) program was constantly trying to load, but as it hadn't appeared, obviously failing. I altered the name slightly of this program so it couldn't run, which seems to have done the trick.

I know this is a quick fix, but will look to do something about it later. At least i can go on the internet now. Besides, for Windows Millenium, there are hardly ever any new windows updates now anyway.

Thanks for your help Browntoa and Albatross!