I recently have had an issue with multiple Windows 7 PCs around the office. They all have the same issue. They'll be working great with no problems at all and then one day when someone comes in they'll report a very slow PC. Of course, this can mean many things, but every time I inspect the issue it's always the same thing.
When opening task manager and looking at processes, things like "svchost.exe," "cmd.exe," "msiexec.exe," "conhost.exe," and sometimes even "notepad.exe" misbehave by spawning multiple instances and using a lot of CPU and RAM. There are other processes that do this as well but they are ALL Windows-related processes and nothing related to apps installed. These processes start out with just 1 or 2 instances but replicate to 10-20 instances - some using as small as 1-2MB of RAM, while others will climb all the way up to almost 2GB of RAM per instance. This replication happens within 5 minutes of logging into the PC and makes it completely unusable.
Logging in with an administrator account and killing these processes helps the problem but eventually the processes just replicate themselves again. This only occurs in Windows 7. Malwarebytes doesn't pick up any threats at all. Anyone know what's going on?
