Remote Utilities: beware!

bazster · 17 February 2015 at 10:36AM

Seeking a free alternative to LogMeIn, a few weeks ago I decided to try Remote Utilities (on Windows 7 Pro). I soon gave up on it because I found it horribly slow, and I now use Teamviewer. However, I didn't bother uninstalling RU.

Also a few weeks ago my laptop started playing up - badly. It would often (and for extended periods) go into a "headless chicken" mode where a number of innocent processes would simultaneously consume huge amounts of CPU, pushing the total CPU utilisation to 100% for long periods and rendering the system unusable. In this "headless chicken" mode even the Task Manager would consume 20% CPU!

So, I set about running malware scans, and also set about uninstalling unwanted or easily re-installed software, starting with the most recently installed. It didn't take long to get to RU, and as soon as I uninstalled RU the "headless chicken" episodes completely stopped and have not returned.

Another thing that's been happening recently is that Microsoft Security Essentials started bleating about an RU file, rutserv.exe. I didn't take much notice because it didn't actually say there was a problem, merely that they wanted my system to send further information about the file.

All very fishy. Anyway, my system seems fine now and although I'm still running a range of malware scans they haven't found anything troubling yet.

Hoping this may be of assistance to others who may encounter similar issues.

poppellerant · 17 February 2015 at 10:55AM

I'm always weary of a computer once it's had a virus on it. Fine you can spend many hours and days doing your best to clean the computer, but it's never a guarantee. I'm not saying your machine is still infected, but I'd certainly be cautious about internet banking on it.

bazster · 17 February 2015 at 11:23AM

I'm not sure it's been infected at all. If there were malware involved I doubt that simply uninstalling a program would've cured it! It might just be crappy software (which wouldn't surprise me given how slow it was when I tried to use it).