Think laptop is infected but cannot find anything - odd start up process skype.lnk

[Wellsy]

Hi everyone,

Laptop has been incredibly slow recently, especially when using chrome. Ran GData (my usual virus scanner) and found nothing. Then I ran Malware Bytes in Safe Mode and it found nothing. Today I've ran AVG and again nothing. I tried CC cleaner to take a quick peak at my registry, and when looking at my start up programmes I found skype.lnk which is located in Cwindows/Installer.

I'm running Windows 7 on a Lenovo ideapad Z570
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[hang-the-9]

skype.lnk is just a name for a shortcut. Do you have skype running at startup?

Chrome has actually had performance issues with last few versions, but if the issues are online, it may not be the computer but the ISP, router or modem.

Simplest way to wipe out slowness issues is just a clean Windows setup. As long as it's not a hardware issue like a failing hard drive, computer will be running like new then.

 

[boosted1g]

If slowness is only in internet browser then the issue is network/internet related

If system is slow overall:
Is your hard drive near being maxed?
Open task manager, is cpu or memory usage very high?
Download and run ccleaner, aslo run the registry cleaner (backup/save the registry files changes).
When was the last time you did a defrag on the hard drive (disregard if you have an SSD drive).

 

[Wellsy]

Hi all,

Firstly I did have it running at startup but I've ended that now. Hard drive isn't being maxxed (12-14% atm). The biggest processes are from google chrome and I have disables and deleted all my extensions. System is being slow anyway, it's not just my internet.

I ran ccleaner and fixed registry issues earlier and had the files saved. I did a defrag two days ago too.

Thanks for the swift replies.

 

[boosted1g]

Can you give us a full list of system specs.

 

[Wellsy]

Windows 7, x64 based, Intel Core i7 CPU @2.20GHz, 8gb ram. Anything else you need?

 

[boosted1g]

What is your total number of processes in task manager, how much memory and cpu usage?

 

[boosted1g]

Also make sure this checkbox is selected: http/www.thewindowsplanet.com/695/how-to-enabledisable-direct-memory-access-dma-in-windows-7.htm

If your hard drive reverted from DMA to the legacy PIO mode it will cause a noticeable slow down

 

[Wellsy]

109 processes. CPU is now about 6% but fluctuating to lower percents. Memory is at 3.76 GB.

When I go to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers there are no channels only Intel (R) Mobile Exress Chipset SATA AHCI Controller.

 

[boosted1g]

Well there is your problem 109 processes and using half your memory.

What is likely a big chunk of your issue is that chrome is set to restore all open tabs, thus you are keeping in memory every tab you have opened and closed since forever ago.
Close Chrome browser, run ccleaner, that will clear out all the browser history/cache as well as system junk files as well.

Once complete tell me how many processes and memory usage you have.

 

[Wellsy]

Done. Still 107 processes. Memory usage 3.54. CPUT fluctuating heavily between 1-40 percent.

 

[boosted1g]

You completely closed out chrome before you ran ccleaner?
If you have to then either reboot or manually close each and every chrome.exe task.

How many startup entries do you have?

 

[Wellsy]

Yep, all processes were killed. And 8 on startup.

 

[Wellsy]

Chrome still takes up 300k+ of memory with one tab open though and three processes. Strange.

 

[boosted1g]

If there are only 3 chrome.exe processes totaling 300mb then that is not bad (not great but not awful).

If you are using 3.7 gb of memory from startup then something else is wrong.
Is there any processes that are eating a large chunk of it (like almost 1gb at a time?).

Try uninstalling chrome and reboot. I have seen a bad update install of chrome cause some massive memory leaks before.

 

[Wellsy]

Okay, uninstalled and reinstalled and it's still leaking that amount of memory.

Task manager:
Chrome, Chrome Chrome (300ishK together), explorer.exe with 55k, nvvsvc.exe is next with 30k. This is my nvidia graphics card and theres a few processes running with it. Don't know how to stop them from running though.

 

[Wellsy]

Went into resource manager:
Svchost.exe )LocalSystemNewtorkRestricted) 294,792
explorer.exe 64k
chrome.exe
chrome.exe
chrome.exe totalling up to just over 300k
AVKBap64.exe 89k
svchost.exe (netsvcs)
dfsvc.exe 57k
SearchIndexer.exe 65k
chrome.exe 59k

There's loads of stuff on here...

 

[Wellsy]

I've managed to take off a few more starting programmes using the run function but the memory usage is still about 25 percent. Any more advice?