I came back from vacation to discover my windows 7 pro system would not boot. After some coaxing I was able to do a factory reset using the recovery utility on the machine provided by Acer yesterday, however the machine has been running suspiciously slow for its specs (asking a program to perform a simple function will lead to it hanging on ‘not responding’ for a period of time before finally moving).
So I downloaded the free avast! and ran a scan. The results are in the attached jpgs below. The program’s initial scan upon install brought no results, however a full system scan uncovered the rootkit. The system crashed before the scan was complete. A second full scan yielded no results, however the rootkit previously identified is not in the ‘virus chest’ and appear to still require action in the log. Hitting ‘apply’ does not appear to do anything - avast asks to reboot the system, and the files appear to still be there, infected.
Note: You need to run the version compatible with your system. If you are not sure which version applies to your system download both of them and try to run them. Only one of them will run on your system, that will be the right version.
[*]Right click to run as administrator (XP users click run after receipt of Windows Security Warning - Open File). When the tool opens click Yes to disclaimer.
[*]Select additions at the bottom
[*]Press Scan button.
OK not a lot in the logs but the error files state there is a problem with some clusters on the hard drive. So after this small fix I would like you to run a chkdsk
CAUTION : This fix is only valid for this specific machine, using it on another may break your computer
Open notepad and copy/paste the text in the quotebox below into it:
chkdsk complete. As you said, some errors were found and corrected. Progress! The machine is still acting suspiciously slow, unfortunately, but I suppose that can be any number of things.
Essex - defrag complete (windows update also ran itself overnight), and after a little bit of testing with the strange pauses in the system appear to have gone away. I will be able to monitor the machine today and tomorrow to confirm.
Okay - was hoping we were back to normalcy so I attempted to load outlook 2013 on to the machine - which destabilized it and started the freezing behavior again. I have uninstalled it but the freezing behavior continues.
So I suppose any suggestions you have, I’m open to!
2.Click to clear the Load Startup Items check box. NoteThe Use Original Boot.ini check box is unavailable.
3.Click the Services tab.
4.Click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box.
Honestly outlook started fine, and it sat for about 10 minutes with my inbox open, but when I clicked to make the window active again it has frozen - which then spread such that the entire computer had to be hard reset with the power button. It started again once outlook was installed again but, as I said, hasn’t gone away now that I’ve pulled it out.
Right now I’ve been testing it through Microsoft Lync - which works like skype and is used as a call answering service. When I call lync it will freeze either when the call comes in (so I can’t pick up) or when I hang up at the conclusion.
But I’ve also had problems with like, the start menu freezing when I want to open a program, and firefox will occasionally freeze as I respond to you - basically anything beyond asking it to idle can potentially (but not always) cause the issue.
I should note that is is running ‘better’, if that’s a quantifiable thing - it’s not as egregious as before and it recovers from the freezes faster than when we started this yesterday.
Edit: It is entirely acceptable to attempt another system restore from the factory image. All my necessary files are not stored locally - it’s really more important to have the machine working than try to preserve anything on it.
It was still periodically freezing - however it appears after another round of overnight windows update, it also won’t boot again, so we have come full circle and I guess now I know what killed it to begin with, lol. Figures this happens 15 days after the return period was up!
I want to thank you for all your help - genuinely I do appreciate that you went above and beyond. I won’t take up any more of your time.
