This is for you XP users who don’t have the ability to hit ctrl alt delete and bring up the Task Manager and simply right click on the ping.exe and suspend it.
This simple fix is what I did and it has been effective for days now.
Problem:
My computer kept starting ping.exe and it would use up to 100% of my cpu usage or very close to it. If I end the process, it would come back in a few minutes.
My Solution:
First let my say, after I did this my computer ask me if I was sure because Windows will not work properly or the version was not going to work, or something like that, but I did it anyway and I haven’t had any side effects.
1. Click on Start then Search
2. Select All Files and Folders
3. Under All or part of the file name type *ping.exe*
The little * symbols mean it will search any file with any characters before ping.exe and after ping.exe. Anyway, you will probably get a long list.
What you are looking for is the ping.exe in the system32 folder. I had to delete ping.exe, ping6.exe, and some prestart ping. If you have the same files in a 386 folder, do not delete those. That is a backup copy of your Windows Operating System. So, if for some reason you ever need the ping.exe file you can always copy it from that folder.
4. So, all I did was delete my ping files from the system32 folder and everything is back to normal, finally!
Have a wonderful day,
JD
P.S. It has been a couple of weeks since I did this with no problems. However, a few days ago I ended up copying my ping.exe from my 386 folder and pasting it in my system32 folder and I still haven’t had any problems with ping.exe. I should add though I had a separate issue and removed TCP/IP protocall and reinstalled it, which fixed that other issue, so I am not 100% sure my pasting ping.exe back into the system32 folder is working by itself or because I reinstalled TCP/IP. If you like to see how to reinstall TCP/IP, here is my solution:
JD has it almost right.
However, he left out that you need the computer to start in “safe mode” to erase the buggers. In normal start up mode, the ping files just replicate themselves again and again no matter how you much effort you put in to delete/destroy them