First of all, having multiple instances of svchost.exe is entirely normal (I believe I have six instances running on my machine.)
Yes, the process system.exe is indeed bad news. Please see
Here
, for details, (type "system.exe" without the quotes, in the search field and click search). By the way, if this is showing up in your HJT log file, it is definitely not clam. I would recommend that you post your log at the
Dell HijackThis forum
.
Someone will analyze your log and get back to as soon as possible. Please be patient since everyone assisting at this (and every other anti-malware forum) is a volunteer, and the requests for help far outnumber those available to do the helping.
oh, just posted a hjt a few weeks ago. Guess ive been infected since then :smileysad:.
My comp is running waaay to slow, hopefully removing the virus will help (im posting a hjt in the appropriate forum now).
STill, I wonder why there are 30+ processes running on this machine. I have another comp with almost all the same software installed, and, on idle it runs about 22. *also running xp home.
That website, liutilities.com, is pretty helpful for identifying which proceses are good/bad. However, for most of mine, it says "vital MS operating system process", then right in the next line, says also could be part of a trojan virus.
You can find it very gooda reference list at
CastleCops
. For instance, if you type in system.exe in the search box you'll get a list of the various viruses/Trojans that use this file as their executable.
As far as the number of processes which are running on your machine goes, one of the things that makes some malware so hard to remove is that they start multiple processes which must be terminated before the malware can be removed. However, with its default settings, Windows itself launches many unnecessary (depending on how you use your machine) processes. I believe that right out-of-the-box I had 55 running processes in task manager. There are several sites (try Google) where you can find a list of all the processes that Windows launches, what they are used for, and whether or not they can be disabled (again depending on what you use your machine for).
Hope this information is found useful.:smileyhappy:
SpotCheckBilly
932 Posts
0
July 30th, 2005 21:00
First of all, having multiple instances of svchost.exe is entirely normal (I believe I have six instances running on my machine.)
Yes, the process system.exe is indeed bad news. Please see Here , for details, (type "system.exe" without the quotes, in the search field and click search). By the way, if this is showing up in your HJT log file, it is definitely not clam. I would recommend that you post your log at the Dell HijackThis forum .
Someone will analyze your log and get back to as soon as possible. Please be patient since everyone assisting at this (and every other anti-malware forum) is a volunteer, and the requests for help far outnumber those available to do the helping.
Good luck:smileyhappy:
George a.k.a. SpotCheckBilly
fish111
192 Posts
0
July 30th, 2005 22:00
SpotCheckBilly
932 Posts
0
July 31st, 2005 19:00
You can find it very gooda reference list at CastleCops . For instance, if you type in system.exe in the search box you'll get a list of the various viruses/Trojans that use this file as their executable.
As far as the number of processes which are running on your machine goes, one of the things that makes some malware so hard to remove is that they start multiple processes which must be terminated before the malware can be removed. However, with its default settings, Windows itself launches many unnecessary (depending on how you use your machine) processes. I believe that right out-of-the-box I had 55 running processes in task manager. There are several sites (try Google) where you can find a list of all the processes that Windows launches, what they are used for, and whether or not they can be disabled (again depending on what you use your machine for).
Hope this information is found useful.:smileyhappy:
George a.k.a. SpotCheckBilly