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Yesterday was a very bad day for me.  No sooner had I posted yesterday’s article then my computer became impossible to use.

Even though I have anti-virus software installed on my computer, every indication was that I had picked up some virus, not just on the tower I use every day, but on the 2003 server I have my exchange server on.

Tracking down the problem took 4 hours.  I hope this can save someone a few of those hours.

My first mistake tracking this down was that I didn’t check the “show processes from all users” check box in task manager.  So when I looked in task manager I couldn’t see any tasks that were eating up CPU time even though I could see that the CPU was at 100% utilization. 

Tip:  Go turn on the “show processes from all users” check box now while you aren’t in the middle of trying to solve a similar problem.  You probably won’t see it when you are in the middle of panic problem solving and it is off by default.

Once I turned that on, which was about 2 hours into this because my computers were running so slowly, I could see that CmdAgent.exe was using 100% of the CPU time.  What’s CmdAgent.exe?

A Google search indicates that this program is part of the Comodo Firewall package.  Sometimes a cold boot or a warm boot clears up the problem.

I also found a post that said something about how to configure the firewall.  But it was working perfectly fine up until yesterday morning.

Then I saw an article that said that if the update process sends down a corrupt file, CmdAgent.exe can go into a tailspin.  The only reliable way to fix the problem is to uninstall and re-install the software.

• On a computer that doesn’t have the problem, download a recent version of the Comodo Pro package (virus and firewall) and put it on a USB.
• Disconnect your computer from the network.
• Reboot your computer into “safe” mode.  You can get there by pressing F8 while booting up.  You should eventually see a menu screen with “safe mode” as one of the options.
• In safe mode, uninstall Comodo Pro
• Reboot the computer
• Install the Comodo Pro you just downloaded.  This will end by rebooting your computer one more time.
• Once you’ve rebooted, reconnect to your network.

Like I said, I hope this helps someone else save a little time in the future.

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