NOD32 suddenly increasing memory usage 300,000k+ and everything near-freezes

All of a sudden, I've got this problem.

Turned on my computer, and after a few minutes I was opening Steam and doing internet stuff, went to the News section of Steam and when I scrolled down it took ages to load the news stories. It unfroze after a bit of working stuff out, then the computer started working and whirring as it does when trying to divide by zero, and everything froze again, with the computer silent.

Had to turn off by the power button.

This happened every time I restarted - Fine, few minites while doing something - opening Steam, opening a webpage, writing a comment on a website - it'll work hard as hell, then the windows and explorer will freeze.

When looking at Task Manager, the Mem Usage and VM Size numbers for ekrn.exe where rising sharply to numbers I'd never seen before.

When I restarted another time, I managed to watch what happened as it happened. ekrn.exe would be at 75,000k as normal. The CPU column would be alternating between 00 and 01 every second. Then it rose to 02, then 25 as the computer started doing the 'I'm trying to divide by zero' noisy working out, the mem and vm usage column numbers would be rising. I managed to see them rise over 300,000k before Task Manager bravely died in battle and froze, the last window to go.

I was patient this time - I had tried to restart or shut down from Task Manager before it froze, and I waited. It turns out the computer hadn't froze, but was of course going slow, very very slow. A program would try to close (to shut down/restart the computer) and I would click 'end now' and be back with the mess of half-windows of frozenness. Another window would pop up a few minutes to close something else, click 'End Now'.

After a few windows and 10 minutes or so, it managed to shut down.

The worst thing is I went back to NOD32 after I got the dreaded, albiet popular, memory usage bug from Comodo. Eset has been fine for months, until today.

I hope I get to post this post before it happens again...

- Windows XP Service Pack 3
- ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5.0.93.0

 

Strangely, I have had a similar, or sounds like a similar problem this afternoon.

I am not sure if the memory went up but everything kept freezing. I did a restore several days back and took out some programs that I thought might be causing it, even though these programs were fine for the last few days.

Cleanmem runs every 15 minutes and I disabled it and that seems to fix the problem.

Cleanmem has been working super for the last few years.

Don't know if that was it or a combination with the restore.

Seems something happened today.
KOR-

 

It hasn't happened again since I've made the thread, and I haven't changed anything. *shrugs*