vsmon == 100% cpu usage?!¿

I'm having an insane amount of trouble doing any work on my computer because some system process that i don't even recognize called vsmon is almost always taking up all of my processing power...I can't just close it because it won't let me, and I cannot scan for viruses because norton anti viruses keeps closing itself (which seems like it might be due to a virus). I've also scanned my system with "AdAware", and that got rid of some previous problems, but did not solve this. Does anybody have any other ideas?

vsmon is true vector internet monitor. Zonealarm's firewall service. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version of zonealarm.

go to :Control Panel > Admin Tools > Services, double click "TrueVector Internet Monitor," stop and disable it, uninstall Zone Alarm, and download the latest version.

Thanks for the information, it's very useful because I didn't know what vsmon was. However, there has got to be something really messed up going on with my computer, because *no matter what I close* there is always a few processes kicking around that I cannot close and take up 100% of the cpu and render my computer basically useless. These processes *always* include:

System
svchost
wsys32

svchost is particularly disturbing because there are five of them running, and if I close the wrong one down the computer shuts itself off. wsys32 doesn't force the system to shut down when I end it, but it immediately re-instates itself and won't ever actually shut down.

For svchost, I know it is networking, and I can account for potentially 3, but not five (local service, network bridge, and a dsl connection, but there are just two kicking around and I don't know why).

I don't know if anybody can actually really help at this point, so I'll probably just format, but if there magically is some solution that I don't know about then I want to wait just a day or so before I actually format.

Oh, one last question, what is the command to get the screen to see what runs when your computer boots up? I thought it was config but that just brings up the config folder.

Again, thanks for your help so far guys.

EDIT: I just remembered, I was talking about MSCONFIG

If you find anything nasty in the startup process, It'll tell you exactly where it was put into the registry. Take any suspicious file names you find in msconfig, and throw them at google. If you get any webpage results talking about that file name being associated with a virus, remove that filename from your registry, and startup process, then try deleting it after a restart.

check out www.blackviper.com , it has a listing of all of Window XP services, what to disable, and what to leave.
Do not use msconfig or task manager to disable services, use the Services window in the Admin Tools, see my post above.
Download "Spybot Search and Destroy" (Google for it, I'm too lazy to dig it out),and search for spyware, Ad-aware isn't enough.
Mmm, what else, if you can't use your computer because of this 100% CPU usage thing, try booting into safe-mode, hold down F8 after turning on your computer, select safe-mode, and then start disabling services.
post back!

EDIT:
here goes the link for SB S&D
http://www.safer-networking.org/

SVCHost = Required for Windows RPC(Remote Process Call), RPC as some may know was the main cause behind the MSBlaster Worm as it had the MS standard buffer overflow problem.

EDIT: BTW, RPC is a required process, if you shut it down, your computer will shut down.

I always have five SVChost processes running, since I have got this computer, when there was no viruses.

What you may need to look at is Defragmenting your HDD, or a complete format if your installation of windows is pretty old(1 year+), these two actions usually will totally clear up problems.

and yeah, as shadow said, check the registry, it is sooooo easy for stuff to get into there(hell, I am making a keyboard intercepter so I can hotkey different combinations of key presses to programs and it took me 5 minutes of programming to get my key into the windows->run key.

>>Do not use msconfig or task manager to disable services

He was going to use it to prevent them from ever booting up, which means msconfig is the proper method of action.

you can "disable" services and prevent them from ever starting up again when windows is started using the Services window.

I just wanted to thank all of you guys for helping out. I am just going to do a clean format this weekend and do things right from now on.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/