Unexpected GPU usage traced to League of Legends

[Confused Stu]

Had a weird issue with my PC a few days ago, traced the cause and posting here to inform others in case they have a similar issue.

I noticed my PC was a lot louder when one of my kids logged in than on my profile. I noticed the second GPU was never idling on his profile, both GPUs were showing use, and the CPU didn't seem to be idling fully either. Went through Task Manager and killed any process I didn't recognise and it all calmed down when I killed PMB.exe. Did some digging and found this is Pando Media Booster - which he didn't remember installing. Turned out he'd installed League of Legends a couple of weeks before and this installs along with it as a kind of peer-to-peer installer/update system. Uninstalled it and LoL, and no more problem since.

Apologies if this is a known issue, but I don't remember seeing it on the forums, and thought it might help for anyone tracking down strange GPU usage/idling issues.

 

[oldestgregg]

Was LOL not involved with that bitcoin mining "scandal" a while back? Can't remember which game it was now but it was back end of last year I think

 

[Sin_Chase]

Pandomedia booster IS spyware. I don't care of its the developers chosen distribution method, it installs with no specific prompt, runs in the background and uses your desktop as a p2p distribution node.

I refuse to install any game which uses it.

 

[Freddie1980]

Thats is bad news, being that everything in pc is watercooled I would never spot something like that. Scary.