Virus Symptoms

Could you guys please list ALL the signs? Well... maybe not all, but I'm pretty sure I might have one on my laptop. I've run MSE and it came out clean, but I still feel like I have something going on in my PC. I might just be a tad paranoid though

 

Really depends, so it'll probably be more productive if you list out what symptoms you have that leads you to think you may have a virus. After all, if you ask a doctor to list out all the symptoms of cancer, chances are you'll manage to find one or two characteristics that "match."

 

I noticed it turns on a couple seconds slower now, and whenever I go to IE it kinda takes a while to open. I opened Task Manager to see if I had anything running in the background that I didn't know about and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I went ahead and got Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and ran a scan. Said it was clean. Seems I got myself all worked up for nothing :/ I'm not the best when it comes to computers, so this is my "Go-To" site for me. That and some of my friends

 

Ok...
Since you already use MSE, I would say there's a good chance you are covered (and in the clear) as is.
Naming 'all' possible symptoms of a potential viral infection might be an exercise in futility as there are so many out there, not to mention the variations, etc.

If you want to be on the safe side, restart the computer in Safe Mode and run both MSE and MBAM from there - if both come out clean, then you probably have nothing to worry about.

Make sure both MSE and MBAM are fully up to date before doing the scan of course.

 

Thanks, I did that and no problems were found.

 

When was the last time you did a disc cleanup and defrag? That may speed up your system a little bit. Also, when was the last time you formatted and reinstalled Windows?

 

@OP

What OS? Windows XP slows down over time due to it's design (fragmentation occurs by just using XP). Vista and Windows 7 are more resilient to this due to how they cache and how boot files and startup programs are stored. In Vista and Windows 7, fragmentation has very limited ways of occuring (ie. a program crashing and leaving behinds its cache or if a program isn't designed properly to clean up after itself).

 

Actually, XP (which includes Vista and 7) slowing down over time on its own is not substantiated.
The slowdown of the OS is attributed to programs and services that get installed over time.
To that end, I remember having an XP computer ages ago which was running for about 2 years flat on the same install, and I contemplated on doing a clean install because I noticed it slowed down, but first I tried removing excess programs from the computer as well as from the start-up along with some services that might have been placed into the OS by programs I use but don't need those services to run at all times.

After being done, the computer was running like I put a fresh OS install on it.

Same results were achieved on a friends 6 year old laptop which was also infested with bloatware and a virus (which luckily didn't get a chance to damage the OS).
The first thing I did was removed all of the excess bloatware/programs, along with the virus, and then the OS sped up considerably (as it was a clean/fresh install).
This was also after prompting the XP to implement all of the necessary updates from Microsoft too.
In the end, the computer continued to run the initial (6 year old XP installation - which was by the time I got over with it fully updated and running just fine and a heck of a lot faster).

The results were reproducible with numerous other computers I worked on (most of which used XP) and to this day I have yet to encounter a Windows OS that 'degrades on its own over time'.
I will agree that the registry for example can be prone to various forms of damage from installations of other programs, but that's a separate issue.

 

I haven't defragged in a while (Haven't installed anything in a while) Unless.... I should. And I reinstalled my OS (W7) a couple months ago.

I use Windows 7

 

Oh, one more thing, I noticed when I do a quick scan for MSE, sometimes it will change on how many things it scans. Somedays it will quick scan xxxxxx amount of files, and 2 minutes later it will scan xxxxxxx amount of files. Is that normal for MSE?

 

I use MSE too, but I never encounter this situation.

 

It could be that most of us just don't pay that much attention to MSE's amount of scanned files.

Either way, I don't think its something to worry about (or indicative of a problem).
If anything, to a degree it might even be sensible for MSE to alter its quick scan parameters as you surf online, accumulate more downloaded data, etc., or even with definition updates (detailed scans perhaps?).
Of course, its nothing more than mere hypothetical theorizing on my part (which could be wrong).

Oh and as I said before... XP doesn't slow down over time on its own.
Check the post I made on the first page that elaborates on the subject.

 

Oh, I get watcha mean. Thanks for the help everybody
And these captures are what I was talking about. See the scan difference? Pretty big difference imo.

 

Huh...
Interesting.
I think that the larger one might be indicative of a post-update scan, while the smaller one could be a byproduct of a quick scan initiated manually.

 

Oh, would you mind running a scan? Doesn't happen on my desktop so I'm kinda worried about it happening on my laptop.

 

Well... first 2 times earlier today I had a scan result of 14930 items... then I re-ran it now and got 15896 scanned items.

Lol... guess its variable.

 

When in doubt wipe and reload... you know your machine if it is acting funny even if nothing else says so... wipe it.

 

I GOT IT!!!

"What's actually happening here is that MSE performs a caching function where it remembers the fact that many of these files have already been scanned and only re-scans those that it must confirm haven't been modified between the two scans

You can see this in action by disabling the real-time protection after the second scan you mentioned, since this resets the cache and requires that MSE scan all of these files again, so it should revert to the roughly 70,000 file figure in your case.

Rob" <---- Guy from Microsoft

Mmmm, did cross my mind. I'll pass, but thanks