Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Your log seems to be clean. But I see that you have 2 resident antivirus scanners running (Norton and AVG). This is not recommended since it (amongst other things) can slow down all disk access dramatically.

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Hi XPenetrator,
Thanks for your response. So you're saying that the Search Assistant entry is not a problem?

Actually, I'm only using Norton for their Scan Disk and One Button ckup. Their AntiVirus screwed me over royally one time and I'll never use it again:twisted:

Thanks!
Kat lover

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Sorry, in my fast eyescan for nasties I didn't see that Norton's AV stuff isn't actually running. But "symlcsvc.exe" is apparently known to be causing trouble, too. Did you try deinstalling Norton entirely? (Merely running uninstall probably doesn't do it!) There is at least one running process left (ccEvtMgr.exe) that seems to be part of Norton's AV.
I quote from http://www.spyany.com/files/ccevtmgr_exe.html

What is/was the exact problem with "Search Assistant"? I don't see signs of known malware that uses this string in it's name like 180SearchAssistant or something. If you refer to
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant = http://start.earthlink.net/AL/Search
this should be pretty normal if Earthlink is your ISP. Can you tell us the whole story what happened and when you took notice of the slowdown?

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Have you read this thread?
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread51015.html
Very similar to your problem and you have Spysweeper running, too

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

Hi Xpenetrator,
Yes, I read that yesterday and I posted this comment today -

"For what iit's worth, I had terrible problems with the SpySweeper update last month. My pc was unbelievably slow and sometimes would just lockup. My screen would hang, and then would "peel" down just like yours, plus processes wouldn't complete. It drove me mad, and after reading about other peoples many problems with it, I went back to the earlier version and have had no problems with it since. You just have to be alert after going back to the earlier version, because you're constantly being asked by SpySweeper if you want to download the new version - not! My brother found this out the hard way and had to remove the newer version again :twisted:

Good luck

Kat lover"

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

[QUOTE=Xpenetrator;250437]But "symlcsvc.exe" is apparently known to be causing trouble, too. Did you try deinstalling Norton entirely? (Merely running uninstall probably doesn't do it!) There is at least one running process left (ccEvtMgr.exe) that seems to be part of Norton's AV.
I quote from http://www.spyany.com/files/ccevtmgr_exe.html

I'll try removing Norton completely. Will I be able to re-install just the parts of Norton that I use?


My pc had been running very slow for a couple of weeks and it took forever to load web-sites that I normally don't have trouble with.

This proves a little knowledge is a dangerous thing;) I read all the things to ck for in the hjt log and saw SearchAssistant and assumed it was a bad thing in general. And Earthlink is my ISP:)

Thanks,
Kat lover

Re: Search Assistant problem won't go away
 

I'm not sure if that is possible with Norton at all. You already stripped it down to what you need, but since it's a program suite, central components will always be installed and loaded. I liked Speeddisk very much (like you) but I decided to forget about it because I found it wasn't worth all the hassle. That was 1996 and Norton Utilities for Win95...:)

To uninstall, try a guide like http://kb.winantivirus.com/index.php...uestion&id=534 or use "uninstall Norton Systemworks" on Google to find more instructions and even more Norton-bashing. You won't be able to reinstall without a complete uninstall.

How much RAM has this computer? In Taskmanager, you can see how much CPU load and memory is used by each process. Is there a process showing something unusual?

I browsed through your processes again and I can't find anything suspicious for causing slowdowns except Norton. Only few additional processes are being loaded on startup on your computer. Try disabling the "Microsoft Location Finder" to check if this is responsible for some trouble: "Slow internet access" can be a completely different issue to "slow reacting/loading computer" and this program is the only one related to the internet and the only third-party thing besides Norton and Spysweeper.

If that all doesn't change anything, the problem is probably buried deeper in your system. But keep in mind that anything you try to fix it can make it worse, too. So backup important data first.