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Geek Culture / Task Manager Automatically Closing?

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PixelF
12
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Joined: 30th Oct 2012
Location: United States
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 06:04
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Just recently I discovered that when I open up task manager, it automatically closes after a couple of seconds.

I read that it may be a virus so I ran a scan on Malwarebytes and it found a trojan. It removed it, I rebooted my computer and tried Task Manager again. Still the same result.

After, I used Microsoft Security Essentials to scan and it found no other viruses.

I have no idea what the problem is. I tried searching this on Google but every website I visit says to check for viruses.

Does anyone know what it can be?
(I also used SUPERAntiSpyware)

www.pixeleater.me
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Dar13
17
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Joined: 12th May 2008
Location: Microsoft VisualStudio 2010 Professional
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 06:28
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I had something similar but MalwareBytes found and removed it for me. It might be time to try Kapersky's Rescue Disk or something similar.

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TheComet
17
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Joined: 18th Oct 2007
Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 06:29 Edited at: 6th Sep 2013 06:30
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What happens if you boot in recovery mode (or whatever that's called)? Does the task manager still close if you launch it then?

Recovery mode disables all modules and components, except for the ones necessary to run the system. The bare minimum. If the task manager doesn't close in such an environment, you can conclude a process is the culprit.

You can enable/disable individual components in msconfig (click start and type "msconfig", hit enter). A tedious task, no doubt, but you could track down which process is causing it by manually enabling processes one by one.

TheComet

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PixelF
12
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Joined: 30th Oct 2012
Location: United States
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 08:04
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I started my computer in safe mode and was looking through my files to find the task manager exe. I found it and renamed it to taskmanager.com.exe, I opened it and it worked. Under the processes tab, there was an application running called xsmxss (I think that's what it was called), I went to its location and removed it from there.

Now task manager is working like it should

Its odd that these three different anti-virus softwares were not able to pick it up.

@thecomet
I had no idea what recovery mode did. Next time I get a bad virus I will try your advice and see how it works out.

www.pixeleater.me
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Mobiius
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22
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Joined: 27th Feb 2003
Location: The Cold North
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 19:20
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The first thing viruses do, is disable virus scanners.

I'd do a full format and reinstall. It's the only way to be sure.



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Phaelax
DBPro Master
22
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 6th Sep 2013 19:22
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Quote: " Under the processes tab, there was an application running called xsmxss (I think that's what it was called), I went to its location and removed it from there."


If that's the case and it was malware preventing task manager from running, then removing it from running processes isn't going to fix anything. Next time you reboot it'll be loaded again. You have to delete it from the harddrive.

http://zimnox.com
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