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I think I may have gotten some Malware...

Jthall502

Jthall502

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2013
24
0
Louisville, KY
All of the sudden browsing the internet on any browser has become painfully slow. Been like this for for about 24 hours. I reset my router and modem. Seemed like everything was working fine for about 10 minutes then back to a slow crawl!! Images or videos will not load, however when I run speed test Im still getting 18 mbp/s. Any idea whats going on here?
 
Jthall502 said:
All of the sudden browsing the internet on any browser has become painfully slow. Been like this for for about 24 hours. I reset my router and modem. Seemed like everything was working fine for about 10 minutes then back to a slow crawl!! Images or videos will not load, however when I run speed test Im still getting 18 mbp/s. Any idea whats going on here?
Click to expand...

Tell us more about the machine that you are using. Have you done or downloaded anything that may be shady? What websites have you gone to? etc. They have a great group of people here that I am sure will help if you give more information.
 
iHailCaesar said:
Tell us more about the machine that you are using. Have you done or downloaded anything that may be shady? What websites have you gone to? etc. They have a great group of people here that I am sure will help if you give more information.
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I have a late 2012 27" iMac. I ran a scan with avast and it showed nothing. Im really frustrated. YouTube videos simply will not load pages taking forever to display...
 
^ for the OP try this if you have a google account

I had an awful slow down after a particular film news site I frequent froze during load this weekend. It made my 2010 iMac beachball for several minutes.

Since I did not want to reinstall Mountain Lion or Safari on my 2010 iMac, I decided to clear my web history from google (which you need to have an google account to do).

Info on how to do this can be found here

Hope this helps OP, Safari is at it's normal Mountain Lion snappy self after I did this.
 
I dont see Usenet in my processes...What is up with the search domain field??
 

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I just sat my windows laptop next to my iMac just to make sure it wasn't something with the wifi in my house and the windows machine is flying through the web while my mac is still loading the first page. This is very frustrating.
 
Jthall502 said:
I just sat my windows laptop next to my iMac just to make sure it wasn't something with the wifi in my house and the windows machine is flying through the web while my mac is still loading the first page. This is very frustrating.
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Could it be an unstable wifi router signal? Try to plug in the ethernet cable directly into the iMac, and see if you still have problems...
 
ethernet cable connected directly to the the back of the mac and when NOT in safe mode browsing is still terribly slow. I really have no clue where to go from here. What is a good malware scanner? Ive have done a full scan with avast and nothing showed up.
 
Go into activity monitor, set it to show all processes, take screen shots of activity monitor, and upload the screen shots for us to take a look at.
 
sorry about that. Here are the screenshots
 

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Are any processes, such as Dropbox, uploading/downloading when this occurs?

Try deleting Avast and see if that helps.
 
Jthall502 said:
I dont see Usenet in my processes...What is up with the search domain field??
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The search domain is your ISP (rr.com). You're using their DNS servers. RR is one of the ISPs that will display an ugly-as-butt search page if you enter a nonexistent domain (on certain browsers).

Edit: and yeah - get rid of Avast. No need for it. Apple includes a built-in malware remover that is automatically updated.
 
thekingofnerds said:
The search domain is your ISP (rr.com). You're using their DNS servers. RR is one of the ISPs that will display an ugly-as-butt search page if you enter a nonexistent domain (on certain browsers).

Edit: and yeah - get rid of Avast. No need for it. Apple includes a built-in malware remover that is automatically updated.
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I thought Time Warner was my ISP
 
Jthall502 said:
All of the sudden browsing the internet on any browser has become painfully slow. Been like this for for about 24 hours. I reset my router and modem. Seemed like everything was working fine for about 10 minutes then back to a slow crawl!! Images or videos will not load, however when I run speed test Im still getting 18 mbp/s. Any idea whats going on here?
Click to expand...
If you haven't already done so, try changing your DNS servers on your Mac and your router to OpenDNS servers. This will show you how: Why am I being redirected to other sites?

Your symptoms are not indicative of any known OS X malware, and it's very unlikely you have any malware on your system, unless you are routinely installing pirated software. Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released over 12 years ago. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided by practicing safe computing (see below). 3rd party antivirus apps are not necessary to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as a user practices safe computing, as described in the following link.
​
Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.
Jthall502 said:
I thought Time Warner was my ISP
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Time Warner is also known as Road Runner or rr.com.
 
GGJstudios said:
Thanks! I missed that. How have you been?
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Pretty good but busy, decided to make a career change in life and now working toward becoming an industrial instrumentation mechanic.

It's a pretty diverse trade that includes everything from bending and installing tubing for pneumatic signal based process automation to working with PLC, DCS, and SCADA systems.

But, I need more hours to get more consistent work in that trade so I'm also working toward becoming an electrical apprentice, which is an easier trade in which to get related experience to aid getting work in instrumentation, with the goal of becoming dual trade certified.
 
Jthall502 said:
OK, uninstalled avast. Problem persists.
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Create a new user account on your Mac, and log in as that user. Now, surf the web with no other apps running and see if you get the same results. If you don't get the slow performance, it may point to another app you have running on your regular user account that is chewing up bandwidth.
munkery said:
Pretty good but busy, decided to make a career change in life and now working toward becoming an industrial instrumentation mechanic.

It's a pretty diverse trade that includes everything from bending and installing tubing for pneumatic signal based process automation to working with PLC, DCS, and SCADA systems.

But, I need more hours to get more consistent work in that trade so I'm also working toward becoming an electrical apprentice, which is an easier trade in which to get related experience to aid getting work in instrumentation, with the goal of becoming dual trade certified.
Click to expand...
It sounds like interesting work! I wish you the greatest success!
 
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GGJstudios said:
Create a new user account on your Mac, and log in as that user. Now, surf the web with no other apps running and see if you get the same results. If you don't get the slow performance, it may point to another app you have running on your regular user account that is chewing up bandwidth.

It sounds like interesting work! I wish you the greatest success!
Click to expand...

Thank you guys for all of the help and suggestions. However the problem is still there. I made a new account and jumped on safari, took about 45 secs for google to load. I started thinking its got to be something with my ISP so once again I hopped on the old HP laptop to check. Surfing like a champ:( I have so much work to get done and I would really like to use my $2,500 desktop to do it. Maybe it's a lemon?? Lol
 
nicushugo said:
Hello, try to clean history from safari, it should help.
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Safari history items have absolutely no effect on Internet connection speed. Clearing the history will have no benefit.

Jthall502 said:
Thank you guys for all of the help and suggestions. However the problem is still there. I made a new account and jumped on safari, took about 45 secs for google to load. I started thinking its got to be something with my ISP so once again I hopped on the old HP laptop to check. Surfing like a champ:( I have so much work to get done and I would really like to use my $2,500 desktop to do it. Maybe it's a lemon?? Lol
Click to expand...
I understand why you might feel that way, but no, you don't have a lemon. We just need to troubleshoot and diagnose what the problem is. Just for grins (it may or may not apply in your situation), you can check the following locations for apps that automatically launch on startup and delete any you don't need/want:
  • System Preferences > Users & Groups > yourusername > Login Items (SL and older: System Preferences > Accounts > yourusername > Login Items)
  • In Finder, click Go > Go to Folder > /Library/LaunchAgents
  • In Finder, click Go > Go to Folder > ~/Library/LaunchAgents
  • In Finder, click Go > Go to Folder > /Library/StartupItems
 
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