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Doesn't that title make me sound like a superstupiduser? I swear it isn't a stupid question.
I'm running into a scenario I haven't encountered before in an organizational peer to peer Windows network. Very informal network, low control, sloppy, some very crappy computers amongst better ones.
In the past few days I have had several reports from various staff that their computers began going ridiculously slow. It is true. Programs will either be totally fine, or going on random timeouts for minutes at a time, with no explanation. I have checked all of the obvious things I know:
During these timeouts, there are no processes running up any CPU, extensive or unusual memory usage. In some cases I have a GB or more memory free, no page file, CPU running around 5%.
I cannot trace this down to any active virus running, I have quarantined the computers down to the basic system processes as far as I can tell. I don't see any unusual programs running, unless it of course some virus has injected itself into a system process. Killing explorer.exe doesn't affect the timeouts.
The speed even seems to extend to boot time when Windows starts up.
Keynote
Now normally, I would automatically attribute this to a hardware problem, such as a failing hard drive.
Look man, your computer is dying. It's terrible. Buy a new one.
However, the organization has had a few viruses that have crept in in the past week that I am stamping out, but these look relatively simple and are easy to kill.
But the main thing that is getting me is this is happening to several computers at once! And some of these computers are not bad at all! It definitely looks like a software-induced problem, however I cannot map it to any rogue processes or anything tangible, to my knowledge.
Question
Is there any way a virus could damage a computer to reproduce the above effects and dramatically slow it down, despite not appearing to use any system resources and without any active process running that I am aware of?
The only thing I could think of would be some program intentionally scrambling or fragmenting the file system so it is forced to work unreasonably hard for a simple task, or some other I/O manipulation. I haven't done too much diagnostics on I/O problems.
Nitty Gritty Details
The versions of windows running vary, though a majority are Windows XP, but this problem also reproduced on a Windows 7 laptop.
On what is timing out, its system-wide timeouts. For example, you press CONTROL-SHIFT-ESCAPE to start task manager, 20 seconds. Now you can move it around fine. And it behave fine. But you press 'Show processes for all users', and that takes 5 minutes. Totally random. It applies to vendor programs (such as office), or normal windows dialogs or programs, regardless of explorer.exe.
Which versions of windows are in play here? What else is similar between these systems? – Journeyman Geek – 2014-01-10T04:27:32.480
Answered above. So far, XP and Windows 7. What else is similar? Terrible antivirus software, and many out of date. Hence, lots of potential for viruses. – dthree – 2014-01-10T04:28:59.370
Just a point: This laptop (Vaio running Vista) had a problem originally that it would run very slow at times. Finally traced it to some problem with the WiFi adapter -- when the adapter was switched OFF (mechanical switch) the problem would likely occur. And Process Explorer showed no processes running (though CPU would be 50%). Figured out it was a rogue interrupt -- when switched off the WiFi was constantly interrupting the CPU. (So I kept the switch on, and the problem went away when I had to reinstall about 18 months back.) Maybe something is causing a "floating" interrupt line. – Daniel R Hicks – 2014-01-10T04:40:15.297
(Of course, a biggie for causing hangs in general is browsers, but they will always show up as running processes.) – Daniel R Hicks – 2014-01-10T04:42:43.480
(It's worth considering whether everyone with the problem might be accessing the same web app or some such.) – Daniel R Hicks – 2014-01-10T04:44:28.080
Thanks. I updated above on what exactly times out, so I don't think its a browser problem or the like. Your laptop bug is interesting, but i'm not quite sure its the same thing... – dthree – 2014-01-10T04:49:31.770
Could be a virus that has injected itself or attached to some system processes. I have seen a few in the past. Try reinstallation. If it were not for many systems being affected at the same time could also have been hardware problem. – Gaurav Joseph – 2014-01-10T06:17:49.280
@Gaurav Joseph, thanks. Attached to some system processes is what I am thinking, but then I don't see any visible process acitvity causing it to slow down. I am not trying to fix a computer or two - I am trying to find out why this is happening the way it is. – dthree – 2014-01-10T07:01:10.823
If you want to find out try getting some original system files and compare hashes with the ones your system has to find out the affected files and then you could attach debuggers and try to reverse engineer the programs to find out discrepencies. – Gaurav Joseph – 2014-01-10T07:04:19.840