computer troubles

[low_delta]

Cyn's computer is having issues.

It started a while back. Every once in a while, like every hour or less, it would start crunching. The hard drive would go nuts, slowing everything to a crawl for a bout five minutes. (She's running XP.) We'd call up the task manager and look at what programs were using up memory, and it would be a series of them - first Weatherbug, then Photoshop, then Internet Explorer, then Spysweeper. What are they doing? I'd say they were sending out for updates if it didn't happen so often. She started keeping Weatherbug (a constantly updated weather station) and Spysweeper shut down. When she did this, the crunching seemed to have stopped.

Can someone tell us what's going on?

Comments

[philrancid.livejournal.com]

Couldn't tell you for sure, but in my training class they told us that Weatherbug was one of the top ten spyware programs. As in lots of stuff likes to ride in on it, and install without permission.

When is the last time you dumped the cache for IE?

And that's about it for what I could think of. Only on first cup.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Interesting. So can spyware cause various programs to start hogging memory?

Yeah, she clears her cache quite a bit. And she runs Spysweeper about once a week, and neither of those things seem to help the situation.

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

Weatherbug, as you've been told, is big, bad spyware that doubles as a trojan loader. I suspect it has loaded something nasty that is affecting IE and PSP. But the problems are almost definitely being caused because it and the spyware zapper are choking on each other, now.

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

I uninstalled Weatherbug, and then ran a Sweep with Spysweeper, which found nothing. Then, I left Spysweeper running and ended up having the same problem. I couldn't get anything else done until I shut it down. It's paid for another year and a half, I think, darn it.

If I keep it shut down and just run it occasionally for sweeps, it'll have to do. I won't renew it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Weatherbug has been removed. Now we just have to find the cause of the crunching. Maybe spyware that hasn't been found by Spysweeper?

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

It's possible.

It's also possible that something got on your computer and mucked things up. You could have eliminated the cause but still have the problems it left behind. :-|

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

Does Cyn have McAffee?

When it's crunching like that, turn off the on-access scanning.

Next question: did it start doing this recently after a windows update?

how to squish a weatherbug

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

http://www.pchell.com/support/weatherbug.shtml

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

Oh.. a few more questions..

How long has it been since drive maintenance was done? (cleaning out temp files, defrag, etc?)

How much space is there?

Is the file indexing service on?

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

No, I have Norton.

It's been doing this for months.

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

I have cclear which cleans out temp files, etc. I run that occasionally but I haven't for probably a month now. I haven't defragged in too long a time. Good idea.

C Drive says Free Space is 169GB out of 182.

What is the file indexing service?

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

Oh wait...found the indexing thing. It is checked where it says "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching."

Re: how to squish a weatherbug

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

WeatherPulse sounds like it offers all the same things that I like so much about WeatherBug. Thanks! First I'll check the Weather Channel one that Hilltop mentioned to see what that's about.

[philrancid.livejournal.com]

What they've told me is that spyware itself likes to run in the background, and send out your info.

You may need to do an overhaul. Also--how large is the hard drive in question?

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I know you defragged since the last time you brought the issue up. And I don't think it changed anything.

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

I did? Oh, maybe that's why this defrag went so fast.

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

File indexing service goes through the disk and makes an index of all the files, "for faster searches".


You've got plenty of space, lol, that's not an issue!

I'd disable the indexing service, and run ad-aware and/or spybot. Also check for updates to Norton and do a "scan everything" scan.

If it's crunching the disk but doing nothing, check to see how your virus settings are set - it might be running a scan while the computer is "idle".

jeeze. I hate it when computers misbehave.

WeatherBug

[cdsloop.pip.verisignlabs.com (from livejournal.com)]

My name is Chris Sloop and I am CTO and one of the founders at WeatherBug. I just want to make sure everyone understands that we are completely against spyware behavior. We are a good and trusted company with one goal: to provide the most accurate local weather information for our customers in the most convenient ways possible. I run our desktop application all the time, as does everyone at our company and we have millions of satisfied customers, quite a few of which I know personally. We have many other ways for you to access WeatherBug information: http://labs.weatherbug.com/ which includes firefox toobars and Yahoo Widgets.

One of the most authoritative sources on the internet relative to spyware research is Sunbelt software and you can see what they have to say about our desktop application here: http://research.sunbelt-software.com/threatdisplay.aspx?name=Weatherbug&threatid=8503.

We have a great support and development department that is always striving to improve our products. You can easily reach us to ask questions. Here is our list of support links from our web site: http://www.aws.com/aws_2005/contact.asp or http://weather.weatherbug.com/feedback-form.html??zcode=z5593

Re: WeatherBug

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

Honestly Chris, after looking at WeatherPulse and the Weather Channel's gadgets, I still prefer WeatherBug. I miss it. It won't take much convincing to get me to load it on my computer again...all I need to know for sure is that there isn't any extra stuff sneaking onto my computer through it.

Re: WeatherBug

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Thanks for dropping by, Chris. From the link (www.pchell.com) that was posted above, Weatherbug didn't seem to be a problem. It also seems to be the best program of it's type, so we'll probably end up using it again, if we get this problem under control.

weatherbug is not and has never been a spyware

[(Anonymous)]

Not a single antispyawre program lists WeatherBug as spyware/adware including Microsoft, Spybot, LavaSoft, MacAfee, ... Whoever claims otherwise simply is mistaken. You can get the list from http://weather.weatherbug.com/safe-computing.html?zcode=z5602 Weatherbug owns and operates largest Weather Station network in the US. It owns close to 10,000 weather stations.