Symptoms of (Malware/Virus) Infection

[steve2470]

http://www.malwarehelp.org/symptoms-of-infection.html

Sometimes, there are obvious signs that there is malware on your computer, sometimes there is not. At first, the signs are subtle; your Computer seems to have a mind of its own. Malware programs contact other computers for various purposes and each of them is a program of its own, therefore they use system resources such as CPU cycles, memory and an Internet connection. A sudden change in how your computer is running could be a sign of spyware or adware. The really hard part about spotting spyware symptoms is that they often appear to be normal Web or computer operations. So, you may not recognize them as a symptom.


Below are some of the symptoms that may reveal that you have malware operating on your computer. Note that a few of these symptoms could also be from a number of other reasons.


Spyware Symptoms – Symptoms that may indicate a Spyware infection


One of the oldest and most common spyware tricks is to automatically change your Web browser's default or start-up homepage – the page that first appears when you start your browser or click the "home" button.

more at link

[LiberalEsto]

1. Thank you for posting this, Steve

I've had a lot of strange things going on with Windows 7 lately. It takes forever to start and Word has a small blue circular symbol (the one that means it's "working" instead of a cursor) that makes using Word unbearable. My husband found something online that recommended changing something about the printer. I tried it; no luck.

My suspicion is that this is some kind of MS trick to force Windows7 users to switch to Windows8.

I've run Spybot and MalwareBytes but they haven't found anything. Neither has a Norton security scan.

[steve2470]

2. try running Super Anti-Spyware

http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html

I'd say it's just as good as MalwareBytes. You might also have some stuff running in the background. Fire up Task Manager and take a look.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

6. +1 on SASW, good program IMHO n/t

[LiberalEsto]

7. Thanks, Steve!

It removed 2 trojans and various other stuff.

[steve2470]

3. one other suggestion....

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Try running that. You'll be amazed at what's running.

[LiberalEsto]

8. I ran it, but I have no idea what's supposed to be running

and what isn't. Thanks for the info.

[steve2470]

9. you'll have to google the exact name of the process

That will help you to decide.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

4. Good read, TY steve n/m

[steve2470]

5. my pleasure EBM ! nt