windows not fully formatting a drive?

B

Bodega

Gawd
Joined
Feb 7, 2004
Messages
776
so i just installed a fresh copy of win2k sp1 onto a computer, formated the drive with the normal installation process. even before i installed anything (including drivers) the cpu usage is bumped up to ~95% in task manager graph. under processes it shows the idle process at 99% and everyhting else at 0. at first i ruled out the possibility of a virus because i had not installed anything and i had not yet plugged in the lan cable. then i noticed that my computer reported 2.11gigs of space being uesd, yet the total size of all the folders on the drive combined is 614megs. is there any way that a virus can 'survive' a format (not a quick format) and still be there with a new windows install?

any help would be great
 
Are you taking into account everything installed on the pc? Windows any other Programs or files you have?
 
Don't forget to account for the page file as well, in terms of disk usage.
 
i guess i should have changed the title to something having more to do with the fact that something is taking up 95% of my cpu cycles even when there arent any programs on it. the issue isnt the space that is 'missing', i really dont mind 1.5gigs being lost.
 
well a format doesnt "kill" all malware, it could easyily be a multiparte boot virus though that is very old school
http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtmultipartite.htm


its more likely an IRQ storm (hardware conflict)
id say download a trial of
http://www.iarsn.com/taskinfo.html
if you see big blue spikes in the CPU graph those are unresolved\unanswered Interrupt requests
http://www.iarsn.com/taskinfo_screenshot.html > far right bottom graph

could be a drive not answering, PIRQ routing issue, wrong drivers ect
also check the event viewer for errors

Start > run > eventvwr.msc
 
thanks for that program link ice czar, it shows interrupts time placeholder taking all that cpu time. in the bios however, it shows all irq assignments as available. i reset the cmos and got the same problem. :confused:
 
likely a driver or a bad peice of hardware

simplify the config
single HDD, no cards
add them back in one at a time and try to find it

Ive had ATAPI (Opticals), RAID Cards, NICs, do that

the solution could be a reinstall of a driver, a new PCI slot, a new cable or different Master Slave config ect.

youll know more if you can pare it down to what it is or isnt
 
well there isnt a whole lot to disconnect right now. its a 3.2c on an asus p4c800e-d, 5900xt, a single 80gig wd drive, and a dvd burner. both drives are set to cable select and are on their own cables. the only driver i have installed is the graphics driver (71.89.) i installed the driver after i had the problem (so that i could increase the res. to use that program you linked me to). i will update the bois if there is a newer version when i get home tomorrow afternoon.
 
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