About a week ago something began running in the background when I started IE. It would run for 1.5 to 2 hours and make my computer virtually useless. I ran all of the scans that Microsoft had suggested for a previous problem and they found nothing. I called Microsoft thinking I might have been hacked. They didn't seem to think so, and suggested it was my McAfee security. I called McAfee. They checked and it appeared that all updates and scans were shut down which is how I want it. Then I checked in Scheduled tasks and found that Google Updater had been running at the exact time I had the problem, so I stopped the task scheduler, ran msconfig and unchecked the Google Updater, went into Task Manager and removed all update processes. In Control Panel I disabled GEPluginCoClassObject. And I downloaded a new Google Earth unchecking the update and share info boxes. I have also disabled automatic updates for Adobe Reader,Java and Windows, at least for the time being. Now, when I start IE something is still running in the background but only for about 20 minutes and it doesn't slow things down quite as much. What can I do to stop whatever is running entirely? What happened a week ago to start it? I would so appreciate your help! 1 person needs an answerI do too