I have been reading all of these posts about Limewire slowing down people's computers, to the point where it consumes 100% of their CPU resources. For a lot of you, I suspect that it may not be Limewire at all that is doing it. You may be infected with a virus, as I was. One quick way to tell if you are infected with this virus, is to try hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL once. If the Task Manager DOES NOT appear, then you are infected, and it's a virus that is slowing your computer down. I have posted these steps elsewhere in the forum, and I am going to repost them here. They take less than 20 minutes to complete, and once you're done them, you will be SOOOOO happy!

My problem originally was that Limewire was not only appearing to slow down my computer excessively, but I also had Limewire opening on Startup without me having specified that as an action in the Preferences. It took me literally 24 hours to run through the files and registry on my computer before I figured out this solution. Every single antivirus program I tried failed to detect this virus. What a great $80 spent! Useless!

Anyways, here are the steps:

1) Uninstall Limewire. You can reinstall it at the end of these steps.

2) Disable System Restore in Windows. This can be done by right
clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties, and then clicking on the System Restore tab. Then check the box Turn Off System Restore. Hit

Apply, and then OK. If you are prompted to restart Windows, do so.

3) Now we need to fool the virus into allowing us to open the Task Manager. This can be done by copying the Task Manager executable file from the Windows directory. To do this, go to c:\windows\system32, select the file taskmgr.exe, right click on it, and select Copy. Go to the desktop, and click on an empty part of the desktop. Then right click on the desktop, and select Paste.

4) Double click on the taskmgr.exe file on your desktop. This should open the Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab. If you are in fact infected with a virus, you will likely (although not necessarily) see close to 100% CPU usage!! Now click on the Processes tab, followed by clicking twice on the CPU column header. What this does is order the files running on your computer based on the amount of CPU resources they are consuming in real time. If there is a process, other than System Idle Process, that is consuming close to 100% of the CPU, then
it is this process (or file) that is infecting your computer. For me,
and likely for a lot of you, that file will be winupdates.exe. Don't
be tricked. This is not a Microsoft program. It's a virus masking
itself as a legitimate file. Please remember the exact name of this
process, because you will need it in a later step.

5) Click on this process to highlight it, then click the button End
Process. A warning prompt should pop up. Click on Yes.

6) Now that this process is killed, we need to remove any references to it from the Registry. Once again, because this virus is blocking us from opening the Registry Editor, we need to trick the virus by copying the file to the desktop. Follow the same steps as in number 3, except this time, copy the following two files from their respective directories, and paste them on the desktop.

c:\windows\regedit.exe
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe

7) Open regedit from the desktop. In the left window, click on My
Computer so that it is highlighted. Now select Edit from the menu, followed by Find. In the Find box, type the name of the process that you ended from the Task Manager. If you recall, mine was winupdates. Do not include the .exe, just winupdates. Then click Find.

8) For the item that it found in the right window, click it to highlight it if it isn't highlighted already, and then right click on
it, and select Delete. If a prompt pops up, select Yes or OK to
confirm the delete.

9) Now, hit the F3 button once. This will find the next reference to
that bad file. Follow step 8 again to delete the reference. Repeat steps 9 and 8 until the editor indicates that there are no more references to this file. Then exit the editor.

10) Finally, click on cmd.exe which you copied to the desktop. It will open the Command Prompt (which looks like DOS). Type the following commands in order, and hit Enter after each line:

cd c:\
cd program files
rd /s /q winupdates

11) 1) Go to the following directory and delete any file with winupdates in the name.

c:\windows\prefetch

12) Now restart your computer. Reinstall Limewire.

13) Please make sure to go back into the System Properties by right clicking on My Computer, and unchecking the Turn Off System Restore box under the System Restore tab.


This should hopefully fix your problem.

For those of you who can't seem to find taskmgr.exe, cmd.exe, or
regedit.exe, I would suggest you do the following if you have not
already done so:

Open My Computer. Select Tools from the menu, followed by Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Make sure that there is a check mark next to the following items:

Display the Contents of System Folders
Show Hidden Files and Folder

Now, make sure there are no checkmarks beside the following:
Hide protected Operating System Files.

Also, if you are using the Search function in Windows to locate these files, make sure that you do it in the following way:

1) Click on the Start button in Windows, and then select Search.

2) Select All Files and Folder

3) Enter the file name in the first box.

4) Click on More Advanced Options.

5) Make sure that the following all have checkmarks next to them:
Search System Folders
Search Hidden Files and Folders
Search Subfolders

Then once these are checked, click on Search.

I hope this helps! :-)

Bobby Naini