Please Help....with unkown program!!

[Jmd0045]

Hi there...

I've noticed that my laptop have been extremly slower than normal lately (Its a P3 500 mhz with 256 mb ram). I looked in my taskmager in windows xp and noticed that a particular program called "winkoa.exe" was using almost 100% of my CPU usage. When I disabled the program (in taskmanger) I saw marked improvement both in my speed, mutlitasking and memory function. However, throughout the day, I noticed that it would restart again and soon my computer is back to the slower state again. It never used to be this way. I pride myself in keep my laptop in great working condition. I keep on having to disable this program if I want to see improvement..and I don't even know what this program does. I've tried to disable it in my startup boot and even in mscofig, but could not find it associated with any programs loading up.

When I tried to do a system restore, I noticed that no restore point was available since I started to manually disable this program (winkoa.exe). I knew that there were restore points available before b/c I saw some a few days ago. I think by diabling the program, it deleted the already created restore points. Can any one helped me? Here are my quesitons:

1. What does winkoa.exe do?
2. Can I disable the program without having any harm to my system?
3. If winkoa.exe is needed, how can I make it use less of my cpu's allowances or resources (I tried setting it to a low priority already in taskmanager but it windows xp wouldn't allow it)
4. When disabling it, does it have any effect of my system restore points?

Any ideas or help from anyone would be great. I just like to thank you in advace for all your help.

James

 

[kranky]

Check for the Klez virus.

 

[Pilsnerpete]

disable the service if there is one. Try to remember when you noticed decreased performance and what software you may have installed that day. scan for adware with Ad-aware or similar. After that, reformat/reinstall. :Q


Pete

 

[BlueWeasel]

Humm....I google'd it and the search for "winkoa.exe" turned up nothing.... 🙁

 

[RayH]

Finding out what folder the file is located in might give you a clue as to where it came from. Also showing properties on the file will sometimes tell you the company that created it. Taking the create date of the file and searching for other files with the same date can also help.

 

[bsobel]

First, DO NOT CROSS POST, you've put this in three forums now.

Second, I responded to this yesterday (I hadn't noticed your post was in Highly Technical nor that you had crossposted it)

"Have you ran an AV scan, the only reference I found to this was someone with winkoa.exe crashing (appears related to a wireless network card?) and a klex infection.
If the AV doesn't tag it, zip it (with a password) and email it to me, I'll have the response team take a peak."

Bill

 

[Vexx]

It's definitely the Klez virus. It typically adds a file named wink**.exe or wink***.exe. The last 2 or 3 letters are usually random, which is why you usually won't find any specific results searching google.