Common Hardware and Software Issues

One symptom that users rely on in assessing whether or not a system is infected with malware is the overall performance of the computer. A user may experience periodic stalls, system crashes, etc. While many of these symptoms can and do reflect a system compromised by malicious software, simple hardware and software issues can lead to the same type of observations.
Some specific items to consider that can yield an unstable system include:

• If the CPU has a fan, is the fan working properly? Overheating of the CPU generally yields system crashes and/or lock ups. Usually the system will behave fine from a cold start, fail sometime later, and experience variable results on attempted restarts. The problem may appear intermittent, but will often be tied to the computational load being placed on the system as well as ambient temperature and/or season of the year. To diagnose: run the system while the case is open to verify that the fan actually works. As a moving part, a fan is one of the components that have an expected high rate of failure.

• If fans appear to be working, are they able to adequately deliver airflow to the needed areas? It is important to understand that the airflow through a computer case over a number of years can deposit a large amount of dust/lint onto a system, providing thermal insulation to covered components or disrupted airflow through case openings. If the inner workings of your PC are encased in dust, carefully remove that dust. Generally, a vacuum with a fine nozzle attachment held away from the components provides more than enough suction to do the job. Pressurized air/gas will also do the job, but generally creates a minor dust cloud and a mess outside the case in the process.

• Is a CD/DVD drive not working? Check that the read/write laser is working and that the lens system is not scratched or covered with dust. A lens cleaning CD will often help with dust issues. Laser issues are often apparent by verifying that a disc is readable on all CD/DVD drives except the questionable one. The only reasonable course of action here is replacement of the drive.

• If system performance is lagging, the most obvious first step is to identify the processes that are pulling the greatest fraction of CPU cycles. The processes which draw the most CPU resources may not be the critical issue, but they may be indirectly related. In any event, it will narrow the field. The Windows Task Manager is obviously a place to start examining system process performance issues.

• Assess the set of applications that are always launched on system start. If there are infrequently used applications, which are always running, this is generally an area in which to trim utilization of system resources.

• Verify that the system has sufficient RAM for the task load that is run. Compare the total and peak commit charges against total physical RAM under the Performance tab of the task manager in Windows. You don’t want to be working in a scenario where the commit charge routinely exceeds physical RAM.

• Is your system littered with gigabytes of temporary files and so on? Take a moment to perform a small amount of system hygiene by running CCleaner. The more advanced user may perform a bit of registry straightening and examination/pruning of startup entries.

The underlying message is that you shouldn’t automatically presume that all unexpected or unanticipated issues experienced using a computer is due to malware.
Consider, explore, and rule out the more common explanations before leaping to the conclusion that you’re infected. You may very well be infected, but similar symptoms can arise from many sources.