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Like the title says, I have a ghost process.

It's not reported anywhere, ctrlaltdel or any other process viewer tool.

No virus found: AVG Anitvirus
No adware found: Ad-Aware


The only weird things happening on my comp is:
All programs loose focus, fullscreen apps become minimized at random intervals (5 - 10 minutes) and my HD goes mad for 5-10 sec

When i try to shut it down (my computer) i get a warning about a non-responsive running process, and it asks me to wait, close or abort. Only thing is, there is no process name, only blank, nothing. If I click anything my compuer freeze, after I get some bad kernel crashes... fun, not


I got the name (random letters ) pmlqqklh when I tried opening a movie, actually, when I tried playing any movie the same thing comes up. The movie player performs an illegal operation, then pmlqqklh does the same, then explorer, then pmlqqklh again!, then every other process i have runing followed by pmlqqklh, and finally pmlqqklh again.


Google turns up nothing...

If this is a virus, it seems likely that the name is made up of random letters...

My computer is also getting more sluggish and I'm missing up to 90% CPU
(98% reported usage, but adding up the running processes only give you ~10%)


Any ideas, any at all?

Try using Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta 1. It picks up a -lot- of things (a lot more than AdAware did on my computer). Microsoft developed it by buying out the spyware companies, leeching their information then shutting them down, or so I hear. So they know a lot.

Check registry startup entries too.

-shiftLynx

Quote:Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Professional Edition , Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows XP Home Edition , Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition , Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

Crap... any other ideas?

I'm running Windows 98

Update the frikin' OS :lol:

Now seriously, I would try the panda antivirus online scanner. It managed to found stuff that Norton didn't.

http://www.pandasoftware.com

I've just spent 5+ hours in pure DOS mode, going through all files/folders in c:\windows by hand (Yes, looking at them)

Found atleast 20 that were questionable, which i moved, and now has deleted as windows boted fine.

And about as many obvious viruses/spyware

Among them was pmlqqklh.exe
In C:\Windows\System


I still don't know what it is/was though, anyone knows?

considering Google finds nothing called "pmlqqklh" it does indeed sound like a virus generating a random name. Good thing you got rid of it. Does everything work fine now, booting, full screen apps, etc?

Random-named files became a common technique for spyware applications a long time ago. It was done this way because anti-spyware apps look for specific filename patterns, and a random filename doesn't follow any specific pattern so it easily evades them.

Ya, I'm gonna do another full sweep by hand later today, or tomorrow.

I'm surprised as to how much obvious spyware/adware/virus/trojans i had.

Stuff that contained direct paths to a file, and then direct url's to random porn site or simmilar (www.free-marketing.com anyone?)


Considering this, it seems realtively easy to make a search and destroy program, so i might do that. Just lists all files, hoes through them searching for certain strings. Slow but it works, unlike ad-aware and AVG...

Deleting pmlqqklh seems to have solved my problems though.

My CPU is back at not using 90% all the time, and I don't get focus losses and fullscreen programs seem to work just fine. So far, so good



*Installs DOS 3.3 from 5" (?) diskette just to go against Na_th_an *

Adware didnt pickup anything? :o You should try spybot. It's great.

You might want to consider getting a better Task Manager application, the one that comes with Windows doesn't show all processes. There are many out there that do.

Also, if malware is running from boot you can check the places on this list: http://governmentsecurity.org/articles/P...tartup.php

And of course, if you're not already, use a firewall and don't use IE.