Is this likely to be a virus?

[Capricorn]

My niece is having trouble with her computer. She lives too far away from me for me to physically check it. However, she found that her AVG anti virus program had stoped updating. When I got her to run an anti virus check, AVG just kept running, but didn't finish. Microsoft Disc Cleanup and Defragmenter also fail to finish. All have to be stopped eventually. She is unable to pin point when the problems started.

I did manage to get her to run Adaware, which, after a few problems, did run and finish OK. I tried getting her to run a quick Anti Virus scan from an on-line checker, but it also wouldn't finish. So I am left with trial and error testing, I just wondered if I should be looking for a virus, trojan, or just a XP SP2 problem.

 

[Xie]

When these programs "fail to finish" do they give any type of error message or do they stop or just plan freeze? Also are the rest of her programs running well or are other things having issues as well?

 

[Lee]

Make sure you have the latest .exe of AVG sure I posted it the other day in software:

http://www.osnn.net/comments.php?catid=2&id=11154

Then download a cleanup utility like crap cleaner from www.majorgeeks.com and clean all the junk away.

Deragment the drive, then run a chsdk (checkdisk) on next reboot, make sure you add the part which looks for bad sectors rather than a quick checkdisk.

Then try again, in a couple of hours.

 

[Capricorn]

Thanks Guys. I got her to download a new version of AVG, and it updated fine. However, when it ran a Virus Check it was the same as before. It appears to be running, but doesn't finish. She left it running for a couple of hours, before telephoning me and asking if she should switch off. Same with Disc Cleaner, it appears to be running, but doesn't finish, although the computer doesn't lock up. Again with Defrag, it gets to 35% but no further. Browsing and e-mailing are fine, and there doesn't appear to be any lockups on other software. There are no error messages coming up.

 

[dreamliner77]

Try getting her to boot into safe mode and running those proggies from there. Perhaps something is running that is interfering.

 

[Reg]

Usually when this happens, there is a program out there "logging" the activity on the computer. The scans being caused from AVG are actually making this program write logs. Thus, AVG will never finish since the log is written everytime the program scans a file. Have her run Ad-aware for spyware.

 

[Xie]

Have her run Ad-aware for spyware.

I did manage to get her to run Adaware, which, after a few problems, did run and finish OK.