EDIT: Deciding on new PC

[Xeogred]

Figured this forum would be better and get more attention since the tech ones are more gaming related.

Anyways I'm not sure what's up with my Win7 PC, but I was just browsing around earlier this week until it hanged indefinitely. I did a hard reset which is bad, but I didn't think it'd be the start of this headache. Things were getting slower and slower booting up and everything, so this might have been coming anyways.

Now booting takes like 10 minutes or something on the black windows screen, maybe another 10 or more for my desktop and icons to finally pop up, and everything runs like a slug. I looked into startup programs and turned off everything but MS stuff, it didn't seem to do much.

I've disconnected just about everything, defragged my main drive (still looks defragmented though looking at the graph), checked for errors, ran system check, looked into event viewer and did a windows boot repair. The only thing that did not go through well was this error:

repair action system restore error code 0x1f

Also ran malwarebytes and miscrosoft security essentials and they're not picking up anything really.

So I'm at a wall here. I can get to my stuff eventually and could probably move all my files that I want, but this sounds like it could be a deep issue and even a reformat might not help, I dunno. I'm 12 hours into a Dr. Web Live CD scan now, no threats so far but they were unable to scan 16 very random and weird files (nothing too sketchy looking, but like a fallout 2 patch exe, Chess.dll???, winpe2.0.iso, just a random collection of stuff), so I've got a slew of bootable programs I'm gonna try out now. I've got AVG Rescue CD, BitDefender, and might look into Kaspersky.

I'm guessing maybe some kind of nasty rootkits and stuff that has messed with the MBR? I guess you can do repairs on that manually too but that's sounding really risky. I'd be up for putting some money down on premium programs if there's something out there you guys would recommend, I stumbled upon this one so far:

http://www.greatis.com/unhackme/download.htm

My Gateway PC also did not come with a Win7 disc so that sucks.

So yeah these bootable programs are my last resort. It's pretty out there and I know these kinds of things can be anything, but... anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I also have not done a memory test yet though, so I might try that out soon. I just find it odd that everything does work in the end, but it's just slow as crap and kind of came out of nowhere, when I do regular scans, checks, defrags, all the time. I did have a similar issue to this a few months back with some IE startup/plugin crap (I don't even use IE!), I knocked that one out and things were back to normal instantly, but I'm lost on this one.

I have never messed with registry cleaning though, to throw that out there. I thought I read once that Win7 does registry cleaning itself and you don't really need to mess with that, but yeah... maybe I should consider that? CCLeaner always finds a lot of issues there, but I've never done a sweep with it with the registry stuff.

My PC is extension of my body, I hate when this happens so much... lmao, ugh so stressful. I'll admit Firefox may have been the start of it, I usually have a lot of tabs going and actually don't clear out the cookies/cache and whatnot with Firefox since I'm lazy about it, but I may never let that slide again now. I also use the edited hosts file out there though, so I had some good defense up but damn.

[Hobie-wan]

If it is malware or such, COmbofix might help.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/

[Raiiban]

Lets rule out it's not a rootkit or a bootkit, download and run a scan with TDSSKiller

http://media.kaspersky.com/utilities/Vi ... killer.exe

Open that up, hit change parameters and click the bottom option "Detect TDLFS file system" then hit Ok and start scan. If it comes up with anything attempt a cure, then scan again after getting back in to make sure it's gone.

If still having a speed issue, press the start button and type in devmgmt.msc, this'll bring up a list of your PC devices, poke around and see if there's anything with any X's or !'s

Finally if you're clean there and still having an issue, pop open your PC and remove a stick of RAM, boot up and check your speed, then replace and remove another one at a time, booting up to test the speed and see if your performance improves. it could just be a bad stick and this is a faster way to diagnose than running a bootable memtest.

[isiolia]

That sounds a lot less like malware, and a lot more like a hardware problem.

Malware I've seen that messes with partitions and stuff hasn't crippled a machine like that. More likely the HDD is dying, or if it's a laptop, it may be stuck at a low CPU speed due to heat or a BIOS issue (well, could be if it's a desktop too I guess...check to see if your CPU fan is still spinning?).

[Xeogred]

It is a slim machine, so maybe heat is an issue. Have had it for a few years now and the PSU is pretty low.

The Dr Web Live CD scan froze... ugh, gave it time too but no go. So I'll try some of these out.

I also have trouble getting to the startup menu screen when I boot up. DEL goes to setup, F12 for boot, and so I figure F8 for startup options? I've tried hitting it, holding it, etc, but get nothing.

I will say even with Dr Web Live CD, I'm seeing removable disks for G and J, which I don't remember at all. Now that seems weird...

[Hobie-wan]

Have you dusted it out recently?

[bmoc]

As Raiban said, give TDSSKiller a shot as well as HitmanPro. If you can't boot into Windows or Windows safe mode with networking (HitmanPro is cloud based and needs an Internet connection to work), try making a bootable usb drive with HitmanPro Kickstart (Warning PDF). I have had a lot of success removing rootkits with those two program.

Between the above and what you have already run, that should detect any malware infections. If that all comes clean then I would lean towards the problem being a failing hard drive.

[Hazerd]

What are the specs of this said PC

[Xeogred]

I have dusted the outside and the interior of the fan area, but that's it... yikes? I got some of those compressed air cans awhile back for my keyboard, could I use that or something else? I figured maybe that's too much force for a small machine, no idea though.

TDSKiller did find two medium risk files, some forged one and an unsigned one. Did another scan and found two more different files, same thing though, unsigned and forged. They're all pointing to Kernal Driver (0x1) if that means anything? I'll keep scanning until nothing comes up, then reboot?

And I guess those other drives I'm seeing now might just be memory card slots or something, I forget safe mode shows everything I think? Everything in Device Manager is looking good, no x's or I's at all.

Luckily I can still boot and everything, just takes ages. And I've got this laptop to maike stuff. I had to laugh though that Microsoft's offline defender thing required me to download some image burner of their own, and I wasn't allowed too because I'm on XP with this... well thanks? lol, luckily all this other stuff sounds better.

@Hazard: This is what I have.

[irixith]

Download CrystalDiskInfo: http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

Run it. It will tell you straight away if something is wrong with your hard drive. That would be my first guess before doing any of the other stuff.