Winlogon.exe

Hi,

I noticed a problem with PC when playing Quake3, every few seconds the game stuttered yet my FPS remained at 125 constant. (I never used to get any stuttering).I have tracked the problem down by trial and error. In Taskmanager under Performance my CPU usage was peaking to about 35% from 2% every 10 seconds. under Processes I have WINLOGON.EXE - I also have WINLOGON .EXE (with space) . If I end that process then there is no peak in processor usage. I ran a search for WINLOGON and got 4 results:

WINLOGON .exe in C:\windows 18kb type application
winlogon.exe in C:\windows\system32 420kb type application
WINLOGON.exe-32c57d49.pf in C:\windows\Prefetch 41kb type PF File
WINLOGON .exe-30f50a95.pf in C:\windows\Prefetch 41kb type PF File

My AVG says I have no viruses - are the entries with the space before the .exe viruses? If not how do I stop them starting at start up.
TiA

 

Thanks for the link, but the search shows little of use. There does not appearto be a virus or trojan called winlogon .exe. And the problem has been experienced with Norton antivirus. However, I dont use norton's and the problem does not go after a scan.
Is it safe to delete the WINLOGON .exe files (the ones with spaces)?

 

Thanks PeteC - I had foolishly not kept my Adaware up-to-date. SpyBot and Adaware6 found loads of spyware. However, WINLOGON .exe still loads. I am sure that this is an unwelcome and malicous file even though the programs don't find it so I am going to SYS-Restore and delete it.

 

Just to let anyone know, in case you have same problem - I renamed both entries that had a space ie WINLOGON .exe.

This resolved the problem and my pc now runs much, much better.

 

A possiblilty from this thread on Dev Shed

 

silvercue--Maybe this has been said already. Winlogon.exe in C:\Windows\System32 is a legitimate MS file. Winlogon.exe in C:\Windows is spyware.