I have a process that's taking up 95% of my CPU.

[krackato]

I have this process running in Windows XP. The process is called tsalpapi.exe I have no idea what it's doing and I only noticed it because my screensaver stutters now.

I just took off a bunch of spyware using AdAware and SpyBot S&D. I then did a virus check that turned up 24 viruses. I used to be very good about keeping my system clean, but evidently it's been infected with everything known to man some how.

Anyway, I checked Google for tsalpapi.exe and it turned up nothing (which is kind of scary), so if anyone knows what exactly it is, I'd appreciate it.

Krackato

 

[johnjkr1]

No idea what that one is, but if you had 24 viruses, you need to format your pc immediately.

 

[mechBgon]

edit: yeah, what he said ^^

Time to do two things:

1) nuke that thing! Reformat, reinstall.

2) get your shields up so it doesn't happen again. You should have a firewall and antivirus software. If you're on broadband, get a Linksys BEFSR41 or a similar Netgear or whatever. Click the link in my signature and go to the Resources page, I've put up links to free antivirus and firewall software, as well as Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and some other stuff.

 

[spidey]

Marking this for later, want to check out mechBgon's page at home. Tried to add to my favorites, but I keep getting JRun Servlet Errors.

 

[VicodiN]

Wouldnt be able to tell exactly what that process is doing without knowing what you have on your computer... Then again, if its consistantly using 95% of yoru resources, its probably not something youd care to keep around.

 

[cronos]

there are types of trojan/worm that randomly generate the process name, so that might be the case here. i got infected with something like this also about a month ago, and the suggestions people gave you are right, you can't be too sure that it's really gone until you actually reformat-reinstall your computer.

 

[imported_Mavros]

How many viruses do you think a computer can get before it is best to reformat???

 

[WW2Planes1]

sounds just like a file I came across on a friends comp. called "ligfdisk" it was doing the exact same thing, and appeared right after she downloaded a trojan (b.exe).

AdAware, Norton all turned up nothing. as did google. I just deleted the file and the computer is running fine. (I know she prolly should reformat, but I don't have time to deal with it with exams and all, and she's not exactly computer savvy enough to do it herself)

 

[JK949]

Time to re format. if you have things you want to save be careful how you do it.
If you save them to a cd or dvd, scan the discs every way possible from every
virus and adware spyware program you can. DO NOT open them first.
As you mentioned virus scans did not find anything so that points to a very bad worm.
spyware and adware are not designed to do such things and can be detected by most
up to date program. sounds like a very bad replicating worm.

When you re format be careful what you do with your backup.
If you don't have a firewall it's time to install one. Zone alarm is a great software based
program and has a free version that works great. also look at spybaster 3.1
These items plus keeping your windows updates and anti virus up to date should
keep you safe.