activity monitor + virus or malware

Hi Luiz

Welcome to Apple Discussions

It is possible to have downloaded something that won't bother your iMac, but that could be passed on to a windows system. Then again the windows AV software, might just think that there is something wrong with the shared file's?

While it's not necessary to run AV software on an iMac, you might want to use ClamXav for a one time scan and then for checking files that you share with windows systems.

http://www.clamxav.com/

Dennis

Someone suggested to check the activity monitor to see if anything goes wrong. I’ve just checked and realized that the HP Scanjet Manager (a program that I didn’t use for ages) is working. In fact it is using more CPU% than any other program right now. Is there any possibility that I got a virus or a malware?

I think a better possibility is that you are actually running the HP Scanjet Manager program. It is probably in your System Preferences/Accounts/Login Items and you can probably remove the program from the list so that it doesn't startup everytime you boot your Mac.

You found a windows Virus, or you found a file that looks like a windows virus to some Windows Anti-Virus program. It could be a Virus, or even a 'false-positive' error by the AV program - happens all the time. Either way it doesn't affect your Mac. ClamAV can be used to check your files before you send them to a windows user.

As far as Malware goes - Any program that doesn't work like you want it to can be considered a Malware. There are programs being installed in China by the Govt and ISP's for monitoring purposes that would be considered a Malware here in the US and most of the free world 🙂

It upsets the users, and is probably legal (in China) Malware, but you won't get those programs anywhere else, and there are no current real Mac Malware's in the wild that are considered especially dangerous or hard to deal with.

If you are going to read topics about virus and malware be sure you read the entire article to the end where it says that at this time, even though it's theoretically possible, there is no real danger on a Mac. Of course, you could be the very first person to get such a problem, but really?

I used to have an HP printer/scanner on my Mac but found that the
software supplied by HP was basically rubbish. Every now and again
for no apparent reason a thing called "HP communicator" would start
running and hog as much CPU as it could get. In the end I ditched
the HP and bought a Canon which is actually much nicer than the HP.
(I was a great fan of HP printers for a long time but will not be using
them any more.)

Dave

Whatever printer you use is fine. We all have our preferences, for me it's the Brother Laser's 🙂 Sweet color, network scan/fax/print - all the goodies... and great support for Mac OS's.

But if you didn't uninstall the HP programs then some of them may be running at boot because they are still listed in your User/Login Items list. If you remove all references to HP from the list the program will not show up in Activity Monitor. And it won't use any system ram or CPU.

Yes, whatever printer you use is fine. However, I know a number
of people who had no end of problems using HP printers on their
Macs. The quality of the software that HP provide for the Mac is
substandard and runaway jobs seemed to be quite normal.

Dave

HI Luiz,

Go here and read Klaus1's post: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1809740






Carolyn 🙂

ClamXav doesn't slow the computer, generally, because unlike other AV software, it's only active when you run it, it isn't constantly searching for viruses.

I set ClamXav to automatically run in the early morning, one day a week. When I wake the computer later that morning, ClamX, through Console, reports if it found any viruses. For the months I've been running ClamX it has only found two phishing files that only affect PC's. They came in spam e-mails and I was quickly able to locate them and delete them. I then run ClamX again to make sure they are gone, and while it is running, I work on other things and don't really notice that ClamX is scanning files.