Holy Crap!
Kwitko
Sheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
One of the factory workers at my company brought his PC to me because it was running slow. After 15+ minutes to let all the junk load up, I was finally able to install and run Ad-Aware. After about 10 more minutes, the scan finished with an astonishing 1389 items!! 
I managed to remove everything after a second round of Ad-Aware, CWShredder, HiJackThis, and finally, Spybot. This is by far the worst machine I have ever come across. I know people have seen worse, but this machine was my "personal best."
I managed to remove everything after a second round of Ad-Aware, CWShredder, HiJackThis, and finally, Spybot. This is by far the worst machine I have ever come across. I know people have seen worse, but this machine was my "personal best."
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:Pwned:
KingFish
One co-worker who's home computer I worked on was pretty much dead due to adware/spyware. After I was done with it, she couldn't believe how fast it ran again, she said it felt like the computer was brand new again. :shakehead I had to tell her that computers should not slow down that much with age, so if it gets slow again, run these programs I have conveniently left on your desktop!
Dexter...
With 98 and 98 SE, one of the things that DO cause not being able to shut down right ARE just what you said, so that, then video drivers, are what I look for these days, many times on Grandma's box as a lot of Grandmas live down in my area. You are correct, KingFish, but in part this is due to the fact that XP can handle more simultaneously ACTIVE and RUNNING processes than 98 ever could (XP can treat more individual functions as threads instead of apps), and can KILL 16 bit lower level processes individually while 98 had to shut down the few process areas it had available for 16 bit or 32 bit to keep from being totally overwhelmed and that gave a good signal in and of itself that the box had malware on it to a large extent. BTW, the ultimate denial of service to a box's owner is O\S destruction.
The older Windows had about 64K for individual process mapping. Newer ones have larger map area, can track more processes. Run a lot of 16 bit in 98, you have very little 32 bit ability at same time. AND vice versa. Overwhelm either, the whole VM used to lock big-time, and still locks sometimes. When the VM hung, the kernel had to mitigate when more than one process tried to use same virtual memory area or an overlappping one.
That in essence is how remote-initiated DOS attacks are done (as differentiated from DDOS, which uses co-opted boxes to mass-attack a common enemy of the co-opting software and its authors), you make an app violate VM rules and spaces defined by mapping of where in RAM or virtualized RAM in swap file, processes are living at each instant. MOST BSODs boil down to this kind of thing. Think vxd as a specially priviliged hardware I\O handling process. Think OCX, DAO, and\ or ActiveX as a GUI or internet or data object function handler that is live-reacting to situations within its scope of function. Illegally working functions cause most BSODs-- XP is better at BSODing more jkust when hardware IS flaky, with 98 half the BSODs were App(s)\VM\Kernel violates, or Kernel\Kernel32 conflicts, or soem of each. most viruses are apps, and the other malware is often using part of what some folks clump into their idea of the term virus (trojan behavior, for instance, is one thing spyware uses as things progress in a massive malware infection).
HTH some to understand how spyware, adware, viruses, worms and trojans are being COMBINED in attacks these days (both in terms of behavior and actual blending of hybrids).
Yes, massive loads of crap are being DELIBERATELY spread around these days.
John D.