Grumble, mutter...

[pheloniusfriar]

Yesterday was seriously dented having to figure out why my ultra-deluxe mega-voom Windows 7 computer was behaving like a rat infested Apple ][ with an icepick shoved into the middle of its motherboard. It would basically lock up every few seconds (the mouse cursor wouldn't even move), the cursor shape would "stick" and take minutes to return to what it was supposed to be for any given context, typing was basically useless, it would sometimes lock up completely (requiring a reboot), and things were generally unusable. I finally had had enough and spent the many hours required to figure out wtf was going on with it. The hint was I would see a wmiprvse.exe process jump from 0% to 5% or so of the CPU every few seconds using the task manager. Searching the 'net, I found that it was an very common issue and that nobody seemed to have much of an idea as to what the root cause might be. Most of the advice was nightmarishly bad, and I pity anyone who didn't know any better and followed it. I eventually found a useful article called "Is WMIprvse a real villain?" that described how to turn on wmiprvse-related logging (it's built right into the operating system it's such a common issue... yup, another "broken as designed" operating system from M$). This apparently works for some people because it will give a PID of the program that is asking for services from wmiprvse, but in my case there was no joy because the PID was given as 0. It did, however, allow me to broaden my search for anything that might have been installed on my system that I had not put there myself explicitly.

I found something running called "Search Protect by Conduit" that I had not installed. Searching for that program name came up instantly that it was malware. Specifically, "Conduit Search is an adware program that has changed your browser home page and default search engine to search.conduit.com. Apart from this unwanted changes, Conduit Search has added a toolbar on your browser and whenever your are doing a search, it will display on the first search results their own ads". There were also instructions all over the 'net on how to uninstall it (for instance, "Remove Conduit Search (Removal Instructions)"). It also suggested that a search bar application was likely the culprit for installing Conduit Search onto the system. My guess is that one of my offspring (I am 99.9% sure which one) installed software onto the system that came with the malware or didn't unclick a "would you also like to install?" message in the software's installation dialogue (e.g. Java updates and Adobe updates both ask to install other software, including search bars, but this was probably some other piece of software that was responsible given the nature of Conduit Search). So, I uninstalled Conduit Search (there did not seem to be any toolbars installed, so it's possible that the daughter that installed the software realized they had made a mistake and uninstalled the toolbar, but didn't realize that Conduit Search had also been installed in the process). Rebooted. Problem is gone! No wmiprvse.exe processes running. No more locking up. Joy in Mudville and all that. I have a working computer again, but it basically shot my Saturday to hell spending all those hours fighting with something like that. I did get part I of my computer science homework assignment (#2) done: implementing entity and set classes in C++ using inheritance, polymorphism through virtual functions, and templates. I am working on part II of the assignment now (am taking a break to do some blogging as might seem obvious to anyone reading this). It's a tricky assignment and I can't imagine how my classmates are faring with this given that they don't have my software development experience (although I haven't really written anything serious in C++ since 1991 when I worked on what was the largest C++ program in existence at the time... most of what I have done since then has been in C or TCL/Tk/Expect or even bash).

So as to keep a positive outlook on the day... here is Young The Giant doing a smarm cover of R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" in the A.V. Club's "round room" studio (it's a masterpiece, imho, heh). "Yeah, we're trying to be somewhat serious"... lol, maybe not so much ;).

"Young The Giant covers R. Kelly" (Watch on YouTube)

And just because it's a true classic as well... same venue... here is Gwar doing a cover of Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son" ... O_o ... what has been seen/heard... they are stunningly good musicians, but using their powers for evil, lol!

"GWAR covers Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son"" (Watch on YouTube)

Okay, I'm happy again!!!

Bonus track: A 10 year old Japanese schoolgirl performing (and by performing, I mean blowing it away) "Carry On Wayward Son" solo on keyboard... holy crap...

Carry On Wayward Son

Comments

[popelaksmi]

Gwar + Kansas. My life is a little more complete. Hehehehe!

I have seen that clip of the Japanese girl on the organ - she is indeed pretty amazing.

wtf!?

[kweenbee]

The other two I have seen, very fun! She is not only amazing, but wow! Honestly, strings on the keyboard! What the!?? Wow! Now tell me what she is playing because that is not ordinary organ keyboard thingy, just way too much going on! Thanks for sharing!

For serious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XsYuHbXZUk

then there's this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uEKsYHrYlk

yikes!!