100% CPU Usage - Virus?

Fidelis

My system's gone hay-wire over the last few hours. A few blue screen OEC exceptions popped up and I had to reboot, but then the PC rebooted all by itself and now it's locking up. The CPU & RAM are being used up by something even though there's nothing running.

I'm on Win98SE. Used PC Wizard 2004 to find out that the CPU is maxed out but can't see what is actually using it all up. PC Wizard is also telling me that I'm using up 95% of my 128MB of RAM.

I've ran fully updated Ad-aware, Spybot SD & Stinger but nothing's come up. This all happened during the time I was browsing the net and downloading files with Getright in the background. I've tried to run Norton but with the CPU & RAM completely occupied, it's crawling along at about 1% every 5 minutes.

Any suggestions? Virus? If so, how can I identify & get rid of it?

Cheers.

Big Chief

what specs?

what kinda of 'files' were you actually d/l?

let antivirus run and go watch some tv, turn off your net if your on broadband also while doing this

cant remember win98 that much as its been a while since ive used it but isnt there something which can tell you what is running in the back ground? least then you might know what you have to terminate while you run anti virus

apart from that im not sure, are you willing to lose the data or can you back up the stuff you need and format?

Fidelis

This PC is a Gateway 500WEB model - P3 500, 128MB SD RAM, 20GB HD, Voodoo3. I was downloading a load of freeware programs, Memtest86+, MotherboardMonitor 536, Prime 95 etc. I was going to make up a boot CD from some programs listed on ultimatebootcd.com, loads of good sugestions there. Nothing dodgy like

I'm on 56k dial-up (:() with Eircom, so I shut that down to run Norton overnight.

After I posted this morning, I went to bed & left Norton to do it's magic, when I woke up it had finished and found no viruses. Although the wierd part is that it says the test was completed in 32mins. I watched the first few minutes of it and then went to bed but it wasn't even at 1% when I left it, guess it flew along after a certain amount of time.

Don't know what could be causing it... Windows is fully updated too.

Can anyone suggest a program that would allow me to view which background processes are using what amount of the CPU and/or RAM usage? I'm on Win98SE by the way.

Hmmm, I never like formatting just for the sake of it, I'd prefer to find out what has gone wrong if you know what I mean. I could backup up some stuff & format but it's a fair bit of hassle. If I can't find out what's wrong then, yeah, I can reformat.

I don't know if it's relevant, but yesterday when I left Getright to download those files, I came back about 10 minutes later & that blue screen with the OEC exception error was there. Might have been just a coincidence that Getright was running, going to re-install it anyways, just to be sure.

Thanks for the help!

Fidelis

Not sure if this is anything but the arrow things on my desktop icons disappeared:



then a few minutes later they're back to normal...



This happened last night aswell. Probably nothing but anyways.

ejmaztec

Try Aida32 here http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php Might give you some clues as to what is running. It's a handy prog and it's free.