March 21st, 2008
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| Apprentice | | Join Date: March 19th, 2008
Posts: 5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by  I had this exact same problem, and after literally 24 hours of analyzing every inch of my computer, I solved the problem. I suspect that based on your descriptions of the problem (which I had as well), you are infected with a virus. It's unbelievable that none of my AntiVirus packages picked up this infection.
For me, everytime I restarted my computer, Limewire would automatically load up. Even if I closed it, it would just open back up again. On top of this, I could not even access the Task Manager in Windows XP to allow me to force a shutdown of Limewire. I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and nothing would happen.
Anyways, here are the steps that need to be taken.
1) Uninstall Limewire. You can reinstall it at the end of these steps.
2) Disable System Restore in Windows. This can be done by right clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties, and then clicking on the System Restore tab. Then check the box Turn Off System Restore. Hit Apply, and then OK. If you are prompted to restart Windows, do so.
3) Now we need to fool the virus into allowing us to open the Task Manager. This can be done by copying the Task Manager executable file from the Windows directory. To do this, go to c:\windows\system32, select the file taskmgr.exe, right click on it, and select Copy. Go to the desktop, and click on an empty part of the desktop. Then right click on the desktop, and select Paste.
4) Double click on the taskmgr.exe file on your desktop. This should open the Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab. If you are in fact infected with a virus, you will likely (although not necessarily) see close to 100% CPU usage!! Now click on the Processes tab, followed by clicking twice on the CPU column header. What this does is order the files running on your computer based on the amount of CPU resources they are consuming in real time. If there is a process, other than System Idle Process, that is consuming close to 100% of the CPU, then it is this process (or file) that is infecting your computer. For me, and likely for a lot of you, that file will be winupdates.exe. Don't be tricked. This is not a Microsoft program. It's a virus masking itself as a legitimate file. Please remember the exact name of this process, because you will need it in a later step.
5) Click on this process to highlight it, then click the button End Process. A warning prompt should pop up. Click on Yes.
6) Now that this process is killed, we need to remove any references to it from the Registry. Once again, because this virus is blocking us from opening the Registry Editor, we need to trick the virus by copying the file to the desktop. Follow the same steps as in number 3, except this time, copy the following two files from their respective directories, and paste them on the desktop.
c:\windows\regedit.exe
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
7) Open regedit from the desktop. In the left window, click on My Computer so that it is highlighted. Now select Edit from the menu, followed by Find. In the Find box, type the name of the process that you ended from the Task Manager. If you recall, mine was winupdates. Do not include the .exe, just winupdates. Then click Find.
8) For the item that it found in the right window, click it to highlight it if it isn't highlighted already, and then right click on it, and select Delete. If a prompt pops up, select Yes or OK to confirm the delete.
9) Now, hit the F3 button once. This will find the next reference to that bad file. Follow step 8 again to delete the reference. Repeat steps 9 and 8 until the editor indicates that there are no more references to this file. Then exit the editor.
10) Finally, click on cmd.exe which you copied to the desktop. It will open the Command Prompt (which looks like DOS). Type the following commands in order, and hit Enter after each line:
cd c:\
cd program files
rd /s /q winupdates
11) Now restart your computer. Reinstall Limewire.
This should hopefully fix your problem.
Bobby Naini | Looks like I'm in trouble. I have the same problem (Limewire constantly trying to pop up/no task manager), but when I copied the task mgr to the desktop and looked at it, the CPU usage was at only about 0-16%.
Wait, whenever I first look at it, it immediately spikes to 100%, then comes down for a bit, then spikes somewhere between 25-80. Oddly enough, only a little while afterwards, it began spiking alot again (I'm typing this as I watch it). So far it has spiked 85% or more 3 times in the past two minutes. The current largest process is System Idle Process, under username SYSTEM at anywhere from 73-98 at a time (it only has 16K Mem usage). After this is firefox (which I am using) and taskmgr.
In the mean time, I'm going to turn System Restore back on since it doesn't look like a virus.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm going to close out of the limwire thing that says I should reinstall so it'll work, and watch to see what pops up when it comes back and how much CPU usage will be used during this time.
EDIT: Now this is getting weird. when it tried to pop up, LIMEWIRE.EXE popped up for only a second...then it dissapeard entirely from the list of programs. However, I am not recieving the little thing that says I should reinstall it to get it working again. Where is the limewire.exe hidden?
EDIT part II: it stays up when the error message appears, but when I click out of it, limewire.exe is gone completely. How can I stop this?
Last edited by M4573RM1ND; March 21st, 2008 at 01:06 PM.
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wonderful 
what if... 
I downloaded lime wire and the player on it will not play my downloads when it does play it sounds as if its jumping and freezing all of the songs are doing it.Iv tryed uninstalling it and re installing it and nothing its still the same.
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