Symantec Antivirus, it’s over.
For the past few days, I’ve been trying to fix my dad’s Windows XP computer (was finally successful last night). After years of working reliably, a few days ago it decided to shoot its CPU usage to 100% when doing anything, seemingly at random, for HOURS, making it impossible to do much of anything at all. I scanned for viruses and spyware and didn’t find a thing. I tried alternative browsers (it took 3 hours to install Safari) to make sure that it wasn’t Firefox. I hand-checked msconfig’s process list to make sure that every process running wasn’t something that wasn’t supposed to be running. Everything checked out. I checked the hard disk, RAM and did other basic hardware checks, even removing all hardware except the essentials, and ruled out hardware as being the culprit. Eventually, I started the computer in safe mode and found that it worked fine, so there was obviously something starting up in regular mode that wasn’t starting up in safe mode.
I disabled every single non-essential Windows service and started it up. It ran fine. So it was one of the services. Okay. There are only about 70-80 in the list that start with Windows. (UGH!) So I started enabling services and restarting, until the problem reappeared, and an unlikely culprit surfaced. Symantec Antivirus (Corporate Edition, no less!). Somehow, after years of working great, it just decided to revert all the way back to 1999 (literally) and take up the entire computer’s time doing who knows what. Good riddance, Symantec Antivirus… you backstabber! How could you betray me after all this time?
I installed AVG Free. Done. I should get him a Mac, but alas, I think the learning curve would be too steep. :(
