WinXP Process Username shows (unknown) every morning & grinds to a halt.

[modem]

Hey all,

 

I have a problem here with my Windows XP Professional SP3 system that has been happening for about 2 weeks and has been as annoying as anything each and every morning.  Every morning around 7am my system starts grinding to a halt to the point where I can't even go between programs, windows, or let alone even start task manager without waiting 10-20 min for each task to happen.

 

Once I was able to get task manager open, I immediately checked the process list and to my surprise, the CPU was running <5% and the highest memory used was Firefox left open from the night before with about 400mb of ram used.  (The tower has 3GB).

But the oddest thing is that the usernames for ALL processes in task manager show (unknown user).  Doesn't matter if the username is myself or should say SYSTEM or LOCAL SERVICE, everything has been replaced by (unknown user).

 

The only fix for it is to reboot the system each morning via the reset button.  Once I do that everything works fine all day, all afternoon, and all night.  I've noticed that whatever triggers this issue happens around 7am in the morning, EVERY morning.  Right now all is working fine at 1am.  But in 6 hours when I wake up, it will have succumbed to this issue once again.

 

I can't seem to track down a resolution and because I have no other real issues, I am not desiring to reformat or do anything in that route just yet.

 

Any suggestions?

[Torolol]

any scheduled task?

antivirus updates, windows updates, steam updates, browser updates, daily virus scans, daily 'optimization', etc.. etc.. ?

[Krome]

Modem, I will jump to the conclusion on this.  Your computer has a trojan that taken control over your default system services.  Even if you reset the services, it will be reset back to "Guest" or "Unknown User".  Yeah your computer might be part of a botnet now.  Just a guess but I don't think I am far off even if I am wrong.

[+Warwagon MVC]

^ Adding on what he says, you may want to try scanning your PC with the Kaspersky Rescue CD. See what it finds.