Troubleshooting Suspicious Behavior

[Piyono]

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.

 

[Stereodude]

Nuke it from orbit just to be safe.

 

[LunarMist]

That's what Macrium and Acronis are for.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup, kill it.

 

[Handruin]

Nuke it from orbit just to be safe.

Yup, kill it.

+1 to these suggestions.

 

[LunarMist]

All of you IT guys like to wipe drives.

 

[ddrueding]

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]

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."