Unidentified process on BOTH computers.

Strange thing happened here this morning.

At exactly the same time both computers on our home network, in
different rooms, started going through some involved kind of process,
using a lot of memory that the mouse etc., almost came to a standstill.
Both hard discs were working hard, producing the same kind of sounds as
if some massive file was being saved or some massive program was being
installed. The process took about 10 minutes and after it finished
everything returned to normal on both machines, i.e. normal browsing
resumed.

Both computers were attached to the internet via the router at the time.
Both computers were firewalled and both had their anti-virus software
running. We don't have things set up so that we can communicate
directly between both computers.

Any ideas on what was happening?

Thanks,
Eddy.

On Tue, 05 May 2009 12:54:13 +0100, Eddy wrote:

> Strange thing happened here this morning.
>
> At exactly the same time both computers on our home network, in
> different rooms, started going through some involved kind of process,
> using a lot of memory that the mouse etc., almost came to a standstill.
> Both hard discs were working hard, producing the same kind of sounds as
> if some massive file was being saved or some massive program was being
> installed. The process took about 10 minutes and after it finished
> everything returned to normal on both machines, i.e. normal browsing
> resumed.
>
> Both computers were attached to the internet via the router at the time.
> Both computers were firewalled and both had their anti-virus software
> running. We don't have things set up so that we can communicate
> directly between both computers.
>
> Any ideas on what was happening?
>
> Thanks,
> Eddy.

It would be helpful to give details of operating system, installed
malware programs and the like.

Chris

--
Remove prejudice to reply.

Chris Whelan writes:
> It would be helpful to give details of operating system, installed
> malware programs and the like.

It would indeed be useful.

What process? Use Process Explorer:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896653.aspx
Obviously not much use if the action is over, though. Do a search for
files recently created/modified.

One possibility would be a Windows/Office update - i.e. Office 2007 SP2
was released a few days ago on Automatic Updates, and I seem to remember
noticing that it was about 250 megs (!) and took 20 minutes to install
on my work PC.