I've noticed a lot of PowerShell instances showing up in my Task Manager, and I'm not really sure if that's normal. I'm not very tech-savvy, but I did run a virus scan with Malwarebytes and it didn't find anything. Does anyone know what could be causing this? Here's a picture for reference: [link to image].
2 Answers
Is this a work computer? If so, you should definitely tell your IT admin, as it might be hanging or waiting on something. For personal machines, check your Task Scheduler to see if there’s a task that matches what's happening. Have you recently installed any new software or scripts? Any shady extensions or key generators? Those can sometimes lead to unexpected behavior.
It sounds like something on your system is trying to pull a list of installed programs. That can happen when a script or application is malfunctioning or if it's a bad actor trying to find vulnerabilities. You might want to investigate further because it could be something malicious at play.
This is my private PC, and I haven't used any specific development tools like Visual Studio or VSCode. Sometimes I see CMD windows flash on boot, but I only use an Ad Blocker and a VPN regularly.