[Steven]

Hi, I am a newbie, and I think I asked this question before. I do appreciate your help again.
I am running:
Win 98
AMD 333 mhz
256 meg ram
4 gig hard drive
AT&T cable modem & service

I have been noticing is that when I return to the computer in the mornings, I noticed that the computer is extremely slow, the cursor would freeze for about 1 minute then move again. The cable modem's activity lights are blinking at a high speed and the computer's hard drive light is also blinking. I check my ram booster status and it says the CPU is 100% usage and I am not running anything. I cannot even ctrl/alt/del the system for about 2-3 minutes.
My question is, could someone be trying to tap/hack into my computer, or is the computer just too old and can't keep up with the cable modem inputs? Or what's is going on?
What I finally restart the computer, everything is back to normal.
I run McAfee, scandisk & disk defrag every 2-3 days, no errors or viruses, delete temp files daily, and I still have 2 gig free space on the hard drive.
I also noticed that the computer stalls a lot when running yahoo.com because of all of the movie trailers.
Thanks for all of your help.
Steven
This computer stuff has got me very confused.

 

[johnwill]

There is more to protecting your computer than a virus scanner, you should be running a firewall of some sort. Since you have lots of activity on your connection, it appears to me that you may have been hacked in the past, so you are probably going to have to try to identify what is going on. I suppose a good start would be to download the free copy of ZoneAlarm and install it. What happens if you disconnect the antenna line on the cable modem for 30 seconds, does the computer speed up to normal? If you then connect it again, does the activity immediately start again?

Several years ago, I had a dial-up system that was hacked, and I apparently was one of the unwitting participants in a DOS attack on the network. I found the problem when other networking didn't work properly with that system...

 

[Steven]

Thanks Johnwill,

Thanks Johnwill, I will give those suggestions a try.
Steven

 

[garvan]

Hi steven,
as well as what johnwill said, I would download
Ad Aware and scan for any spyware that may be on your PC, delete anything it finds. You can get Zone Alarm (be sure to get the free one and not the free to try Pro one) from this Site aswell. Just type it in the box at the top after getting ad aware.
It might be worth considering upgrading your processor as you'll not get the most from your ram and modem.

 

[Steven]

Thanks Garvan, found 7 spyware on my computer

Thanks Garvan, I ran the ad aware software on quick scan and found 4 gator spyware on my computer, then I ran the deep scan and found 2 more gator and 1 comet cursor spyware. I deleted all of them, the nerve of these guys :angry2: putting their hidden spyware on my computer.
I hope this solves my problems.
Thanks again,
Steven.