I’ve recently moved to Avast, having suffered many problems with virus attacks that MS Security Essentials seemed unable to deal with. Avast seems to have done a good job of identifying and isolating most of the issues and my machine does now run OK … with one exception. Memory use always seems to be excessive, even with no applications running. Task Manager reports the culprit as multiple occurrences of iexplore.exe *32 processes. I never use IE but I found that it wouldn’t open anyway. I have downloaded IE9 but it refuses to open correctly and eventually is closed by Windows.
Whilst typing this I’ve managed to capture an Avast pop-up which I’ve seen a few times and I’ve attached it here, along with the resulting web page received when pressing More Details.
I guess this is all a hangover of previous problems. Hope you can assist.
Windows 7 Home Premium
Samsung R540 laptop
Intel i3 CPU
64 bit
[*]Click the Run Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
[*]When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL.
[*]Attach both logs
Warning This fix is only relevant for this system and no other, using on another computer may cause problems
Be advised that when the fix commences it will shut down all running processes and you may lose the desktop and icons, they will return on reboot
Download the attached fix.txt to your desktop
Run OTL
Press Run Fix
A dialogue will open asking for the location of fix.txt
Locate and select the text file you downloaded to your desktop
Press Run Fix again
OTL will now execute the commands
THEN
Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode onto your desktop.
[*]Close all open programs and internet browsers.
[*]Double click on AdwCleaner.exe to run the tool.
[*]Click on Scan.
[*]After the scan is complete click on “Clean”
[*]Confirm each time with Ok.
[*]Your computer will be rebooted automatically. A text file will open after the restart.
[*]Please post the content of that logfile with your next answer.
[*]You can find the logfile at C:\AdwCleaner[S1].txt as well.
Note: You need to run the version compatible with your system. If you are not sure which version applies to your system download both of them and try to run them. Only one of them will run on your system, that will be the right version.
[*]Right click to run as administrator (XP users click run after receipt of Windows Security Warning - Open File). When the tool opens click Yes to disclaimer.
[*]Press Scan button.
[*]It will produce a log called FRST.txt in the same directory the tool is run from.
[*]Please copy and paste log back here.
[*]The first time the tool is run it generates another log (Addition.txt - also located in the same directory as FRST.exe/FRST64.exe). Please also paste that along with the FRST.txt into your reply.
Hi
When you say one process per tab, are you referring to IE tabs? I never use IE, in fact, as I said in my original post, IE will not run. The iexplore processes I have mentioned occurred with no applications open at the time. Having said that, I haven’t seen them during the last hour or so.
Anyway, thanks for sticking with this. Logs attached along with latest alert.
Update at 14:26
Also attached is the latest alert which came when I was viewing Task Manager. I presume it’s associated with the last entry. Chrome was open at the time but definitely not IE.
In Internet Explorer could you go to manage addons and disable the Avast Security Addons and see if IE then runs
Download and Install Combofix
Download ComboFix from one of the following locations: Link 1 Link 2
VERY IMPORTANT !!! Save ComboFix.exe to your Desktop
IMPORTANT - Disable your AntiVirus and AntiSpyware applications, usually via a right click on the System Tray icon. They may otherwise interfere with our tools. If you have difficulty properly disabling your protective programs, refer to this link here
[*]Double click on ComboFix.exe & follow the prompts.
[*]Accept the disclaimer and allow to update if it asks
Avast is disabled but Combofix tells me that Security Essentials is running. I uninstalled it yesterday and there’s no sign of it. The only option seemed to be to agree to continue (at my own risk) so I killed the blue box when it started to run.
All seemed to be quiet and going well until I happened to be looking at Last Scanned Items in Avast stats. Please see attached screen shot where the iexplore script can be seen starting. Is that significant?
That leads to a dead end… Do you launch IE from a desktop/quick launch icon ? If so delete them and we will then get a fresh copy after confirmation as to whether or not that was a problem
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