Windows Sort of Stops Working From Time to Time

[DavidE]

Yea, i see your new thread.
You didn't specifically ask in that thread "But if this is an SMM virus, would a clean install make a difference".
That question may get more replies/help from security experts that understand SMM.

 

[RC5000]

I just did!

 

[RC5000]

I can tell when it happens because I have a very long running batch file that echoes the time, pings google and echoes the time. When it last happened, ping stops, and the stop lasted 4:27:28 (4 min, 27 secs 28 milliseconds). This is in the typical range. I cannot cause it to happen. Yesterday it didn't happen at all (as far as I could tell), so open and closing Word wouldn't work. I need to slim down what I can monitor with ProcMon. Any help there is appreciated.

 

[RC5000]

One IT technician I know feels these problems are due to a deeply implanted virus (maybe SMM). OK, maybe. I don't know. However, it seems like I don't have problems when I'm in Safe Mode, so that maybe driver related???

 

[RC5000]

It seems that Kaspersky is the culprit as some people have suggested. I cannot say for sure since it's not like some resource was unavailable and now it is, but when I ran msconfig.exe and deselected the Kaspersky services and restarted, the machine restarted normally and so far, **so far**, has not exhibited the problem. I guess running Windows Defender is good enough?????

 

[OldGrantonian]

,

...deselected the Kaspersky services and restarted, the machine restarted normally and so far, **so far**, has not exhibited the problem...

At some point, I think you must restore the KIS services as a "negative" test. Otherwise, the techies will say that you haven't proved that KIS was the culprit

If you restore the KIS services, I would be interested in knowing what happens. I've been using Kaspersky (KIS) for about 10 years. About once a month, my disk LED is permanently solid white for several hours. When I use procmon, I can see hundreds of KIS ops, mainly reads. For this reason, I don't use scheduled scanning. I do manual scanning at times that suit myself (usually last thing at night - KIS switches itself off). I've checked the boxes that force KIS to yield resources to other applications.

KIS is usually top of the list for using the least amount of system resources:
https://www.av-test.org/en/news/new...e-test-does-antivirus-software-slow-down-pcs/

If that link is removed, google for av-test.org, where you will see the results for 23 AVs. And if that is also removed, just email me

I've trained myself to ignore the solid white LED once a month. I think KIS has some female characteristics, and simply wants to let me know that she's still around, or sulking, or whatever. I pretend to do advanced techie things like CHKDSK, procmon, process explorer, memtest, defrag. MBAM, CCleaner. These things never find anything wrong, but honour seems to be satisfied for another month
.

 

[RC5000]

I will restore the KIS services in a little while and I will let you know here what is going on. Hmm...I've never thought about the gender of software before. Gotta mull that over coffee today. (Forgetting about "Her").