cpu usage went to 100%

[relaxandreflect]

i know this is probably a vague question, but here's the scenario.

i have a p4 laptop with 256mb ram. over the past week or so, the cpu usage is suddenly running at 100% all the time as shown in the task manager. it is running hot because of this. i checked for unknown processes and unknown installed programs in the task manager and add/remove programs, respectively, but found nothing. what could possibly be happening? if any further info is needed, i will try to provide that as well.

 

[fw3308]

You may need to go to the manufacturers web site and look for issues specific to yours. It could need a bios update or a patch. Start there first.

 

[cheap]

Is your laptop hooked up to internet? It could be a worm. A quick way to check is to disconnect your laptop from internet and cpu usage should return to normal.

 

[airfoil]

Go to Task manager and click on the 'Processes' tab. Once there, click where it says 'CPU' to arrange processes according to CPU usage. Go to the process that is taking up the most and figure out if its a known process to rule out a strange prog taking up CPU resources. End this process to see if it helps.

 

[UsandThem]

There was a virus that was discussed here that caused the CPU usage to go to 100%. I couldn't find the thread, or remember the virus name (the virus creates a process on your computer that gives it away)

Try this link and scan your PC and see if it can find anything:
Virus Scan

 

[SemperFi]

I had a similar situation a month or so ago with the kids computer. It took forever to start a program the mouse was jerky. On a reboot everything was fine until one of the 2 effected users connected to the internet. Virus scan didn't catch anything. There was 2 processes that between them it was using 100% of the cycles. One of them was rundll I forget the other. I would shut down the one I forget the name of and the rundll would jump to 100% and it would not shut down.

Spybot S&D took care of the problem for me.

 

[amdskip]

Run adaware.

 

[Abhi]

Update and run:

1) An antivirus
2) Adaware
3) Spybot

 

[relaxandreflect]

ok, i tried the welch(?) virus scan which turned up nothing. i tried the spybot and adaware and they cleared out a bunch of stuff (thanks for that tip, ran it on all my systems). tried removing all the windows updates i could find, but still running at 100%. i have posted the new sorted processes tab here. it seems that smss.exe is using between 66-89%, basically taking up whatever is not in use. any suggestions?


also, how do i get rid of the wjview? i saw instructions for removing and reinstalling the sun java, but i keep getting 'error in advpack.dll missing entry: launchinfselection'

 

[relaxandreflect]

i got to thinking, so i checked more and found this link, which describes a Backdoor.IRC.Aladinz.F which is a trojan horse. it made sense since i have been on mirc. i ran through the instructions, and even ran them in safe mode, but whn i reboot, the second smss.exe process is still there. i tried killing it in normal mode with pskill, but it comes back in a few seconds, even with system restore (XP) disabled. i checked my startup registry key for the smss.exe, but nothing was there that didn't need to be.