Troubleshooting Suspicious Behavior

Piyono

Storage is cool
Joined
Jan 25, 2002
Messages
572
Location
Toronto
Hey, Fam,

On my Lenovo P50 running Windows 10, Internet Explorer 11 has been mysteriously launching and running quietly in the background while guzzling 10-11% CPU.
It uses this much when I launch it manully as well. How can I figure out the cause of this behavior short of poring over Process Monitor logs?

Should I just assume it's malware and reformat? I am a little paranoid about keyloggers and such.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Nuke and pave. Part of having a secure home is not having a lot that would be stolen. Part of having a secure computer is being able to rebuild your environment from scratch easily, so you don't hesitate to blow it away when you should.
 

snowhiker

Storage Freak Apprentice
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
1,668
If you're feeling adventurous you could try Merc's old "Malware Removal Procedures" and attempt to recover your computer from malware. It worked for me but took multiple (maybe a dozen?) hours and requires a second working/safe computer to download the necessary programs and their updates. Only worth attempting if you have older apps/data that you can not re-install after a "format C:"

Good luck.



P.S. But like everybody else says, "just nuke it from orbit.....just to be sure."
 
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