Do i have a virus

311

Just today the laptop started messing about.
First noticed something this morning when it had rebooted itself.
now photoshop closes after about 10 minutes ,it just disapears.

Rollo Tamasi

com'on man! do a virus scan like!

311

Sure I have a wall up all the time and two anti virus running at the same time.

I came up this morning to find the laptop stuck at the enter bios screen
Nothing was updating when I left the machine.

Com on man ,I'm using machines since 1989.
I just thought there was something crawling around in java or something, started using java again the last few days.

JPA

2 anti virus programs running is a bad idea. Choose one. Conflicts and that.

jimi_t

Hard drive might've borked out?
Get AntiVir and AdAware - they're both free and a lot better than any of the "commercial" solutions.

311

Thanks for the comments ,I got AVG last week ,seems to be ok ,very slow at doing a scan though and seems to scan a lot.

Will shut panda down ,I don't think panda is what it used to be anyways.

Any ideas what the story is with photoshop closing , is there anything the machine can do to stop it from working , i.e closing it pagefile or something.

5uspect

sometimes trojans etc will pass under the radar. PS closing is a bit bizzare for a "commercial" virus tho. after your scan get a second opinion on pandasoft's free online scanner. also open up the task manager and go to the processes tab and google ALL the processes that appear there to see if they check out.
check these carefully they can be hard to spot
e.g. scvhost.exe is a normal windows process (3 or 4 exist at a time)
whereas scvhostc.exe is malware

are you getting pop ups in internet explorer? this "hi-jack" is a definate sign of infection (switch to an alternative browser like firefox if you haven't already)

EDIT: change AVG scan settings to scan non-infectable files to get a thourgh scan, takes longer but itw worht it.

311

Really appreciate all that 5uspect ,I do check the tasks alright when I'm not sure ,but I'm just looking for CPU usage and don't really know what i'm doing.

It's annoying me because I keep the machine clean and only edit photos and stuff on it.

I'll see how I get on ,
Thanks

Brian.

5uspect

its the process names you need to watch
also if you're using internet explorer use hijack this to scan for issues
google it and you'll find plenty of guides on how to use it

Are there any other symptoms?
So is anything else other than photoshop crashing?
what version do you have?
are auto updates turned on? - this may cause a problem, try reinstalling PS

Webmonkey

Try Scanning outside windows too with Hiren's BootCD with upto date Defs or use a similer boot cd. Sometimes i find they can hide when windows is running.

But from what you've said it looks like another problem, perhaps like suggested your harddrive is failing, or you've faulty memory. Either way that boot cd can do a lot of dignostic tests too

Ruu_Old

5uspect wrote:

sometimes trojans etc will pass under the radar. PS closing is a bit bizzare for a "commercial" virus tho. after your scan get a second opinion on pandasoft's free online scanner. also open up the task manager and go to the processes tab and google ALL the processes that appear there to see if they check out.
check these carefully they can be hard to spot
e.g. scvhost.exe is a normal windows process (3 or 4 exist at a time)
whereas scvhostc.exe is malware

are you getting pop ups in internet explorer? this "hi-jack" is a definate sign of infection (switch to an alternative browser like firefox if you haven't already)

EDIT: change AVG scan settings to scan non-infectable files to get a thourgh scan, takes longer but itw worht it.

I think you meant svchost.exe (is the correct file) Dont forget to open msconfig.exe (start, run and msconfig in the box) to see if theres anything in startup you think is not meant to be there. Also there are a number of Windows services that you can disable safely to help speed up your computer.

311

Thanks Ruu ,I think the machine is running about as fast it can .

It's just one of those things where I am not fully sure ,but i think theres something floating around .

I'll try the config file.

Sometimes I wish I was using Dos again ,ATDT and all that.

Thanks

5uspect

Ruu wrote:

I think you meant svchost.exe (is the correct file) Dont forget to open msconfig.exe (start, run and msconfig in the box) to see if theres anything in startup you think is not meant to be there. Also there are a number of Windows services that you can disable safely to help speed up your computer.

:rolleyes: my bad, but goes to show how you can get caught out with dodgy processes.

Brian, you haven't told us anything other than photoshop shutting down.
Are there other problems?

X-SL

how much RAM do you have?

311

Sorry ,its a 1.6 gigahertz centrino ,512ram ,60gb serial hard drive.
half speed button to save on power Siemens M7440G
XP Home edition.
Photoshop closes ,but only when I use it ,if i just leave it running in the backround it stays open.
I'm using it to edit RAW image files ,I tried looking up adobes website but it's for members only.

The more I think about it ,it's probably a pagefile problem ,is there anyway photoshop is using the hard disk as memory and it's crashing trying to share between physical memory and the hard drive ??

sorry just to add ,The keyboard acts the maggot when i'm typing sometimes

5uspect

_Brian_ wrote:

Sorry ,its a 1.6 gigahertz centrino ,512ram ,60gb serial hard drive.
half speed button to save on power Siemens M7440G
XP Home edition.
Photoshop closes ,but only when I use it ,if i just leave it running in the backround it stays open.
I'm using it to edit RAW image files ,I tried looking up adobes website but it's for members only.

The more I think about it ,it's probably a pagefile problem ,is there anyway photoshop is using the hard disk as memory and it's crashing trying to share between physical memory and the hard drive ??

sorry just to add ,The keyboard acts the maggot when i'm typing sometimes

Yes, check scratch disks under edit >preferences, you need to use this feature for PS to run smoothly tho.

311

Thank you

8T8

Did you check the system RAM with Memtest+ & did it give it the all clear ?

5uspect

you can also diasble all the plugins in photoshop to see if that affects it. put a ~ infront of the filename of the plugin you want to disable in the C:\program...Adobe\photoshop\plugins to disable them.
not sure what difference this will make but it may be an easier option than some of the more drastic things you could do

311

I forgot about this thread ,

The trouble I was having with photoshop on my laptop was the scratch disk option.

But I have another thread now ,as the pc has a virus :mad:

Thanks

Brian.