The Warring States of NPF - Computer goes slow/unresponsive after startup.

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Computer goes slow/unresponsive after startup.

Don't really know what the problem is. I haven't done anything unusual lately and haven't made any particular downloads or installations recently besides a few Steam games from one of the Indie Bundles.

When I turn on the computer, it starts up normally and without issue. After it gets to my desktop, though, everything slows down to a crawl. The desktop itself takes several minutes to appear (if it does so at all - right now I'm looking at a screen totally black except for the mouse cursor, and it's been that way for over 15 minutes), and once I get past that hurdle I can't reliably interact with anything without it freezing up to the point where I need to Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill the process.

I was able to get it running in Safe Mode to gather a DxDiag (attached) and attempt to run a System Restore (to a few days ago when it worked fine). However, Windows says the System Restore failed for an "unspecified reason".

Let no computer go frozen!

Could you post a HijackThis! log? I don't really see any clues in that DX-Diag (though someone else may and make me feel dumb).

the DxDiag suggests his hardware and such is still in order; A HijackThis! log would help, but I think we can safely leap ahead to listing possible issues:

-Virus
Always a possibility.

-Keylogger/heavy background spyware
Also always a possibility.

HijackThis! log would point those suckers out, I wager.

-Failing Hardware
Typically I don't like to look at this one until after the first two are cleared; but looking at the hardware on your machine, I'd wager it's about 5 years old, maybe a bit older? you could be suffering a hardware malfunction somewhere along the line. System Restore failure would suggest, to me, either Hard Drive, or RAM, with a glance at CPU just to cover all bases [AMD's burn twice as bright and half as long].

That's all speculation and theory though; as Synk said, all guessing is bupkiss without a good TH! log.

When my laptop turned 5 it basically became this. Beyond the salvation of reformats, too. Everything just turned to garbage, and such seems to be the nature of these things.

With the exception of the hard drive (less than three years old IIRC), everything was bought new just two months ago. I doubt it's age.

Avast tells me there's no viruses around, though it did mention a "corrupt or unreadable" object, located at C:\Windows\Installer\dd58d.msp. Avast offers to repair it, but I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do here.

Haven't had a chance to check for spyware. For some reason I never got around to installing MalwareBytes on the computer and I'm not sure I can reasonably get it on there in this state.

Attached a log, though I'm not sure I have that correct, unless it really is that small.

(Also, the computer no longer runs when not in safe mode - the "black desktop except for mouse cursor" thing is now a constant.)

update: I was able to get MBytes on here after all. No nasties detected, though.

Instead of a System Restore have you tried booting from the install disk and performing a repair?

Multiple things are telling me your OS is up the big creek there, mah boi.

Runs shitty upon OS startup and remains shitty at varying degrees of shittiness
System restore fails
Avast notices an OS file is corrupted and fails to fix it
Hardware seems to be in order/new-ish computer
MBAM coming out clean

I'd prefer to see a normal boot log of HJT, but it seems that option of not on the table.

If the OS repair doesn't do anything there's a good chance you might have to reformat. That is, unless either Synk or I manage to pull a rabbit out of our techy hats between now and that jolly last ditch effort.

I'm inclined to agree so far. If the hardware was failing and/or drivers were messed up, your machine would turn off or blue-screen and reset, at least usually. The lack of anything in the two logs looking weird, to me at any rate, leaves me not sure how to identify possible solutions.

I might suggest a couple things to try:
-- boot with the computer not connected to a network (i.e. unplug your network cable and/or disable wifi adpaters) to see if it skips trying to connect and check for updates or anything like that it might be trying to do

-- Since you seem to be able to get into Safe Mode, check msconfig while in Safe Mode to see if, on a normal boot, there are tons of things being started or if any of them are not "ordinary"

-- also in msconfig, you can enable boot logging and reboot; then once you get into Windows again and are sitting at your slow/unresponsive blank screen for a little you can reboot and then read the file to see what it recorded (may give clues?)

When did this start happening vs. when you put the newer hardware together? Were there driver updates between now and then (perhaps reaching for straws here)?

Reformatting is annoying, so I hope we can stumble into a solution for you before that point. Perhaps if a System Restore doesn't work for you the repair install will at least get you up and running with minimal setback.

As a reminder, if I knew what I was doing here I probably wouldn't be in this mess.

Quote:

I might suggest a couple things to try:
-- boot with the computer not connected to a network (i.e. unplug your network cable and/or disable wifi adpaters) to see if it skips trying to connect and check for updates or anything like that it might be trying to do

Didn't work; same results.

Quote:

-- Since you seem to be able to get into Safe Mode, check msconfig while in Safe Mode to see if, on a normal boot, there are tons of things being started or if any of them are not "ordinary"

I have no way of knowing how to check this sort of thing, or to be more precise I don't really know how to interpret any of the data presented by msconfig. Explain please?

Quote:

-- also in msconfig, you can enable boot logging and reboot; then once you get into Windows again and are sitting at your slow/unresponsive blank screen for a little you can reboot and then read the file to see what it recorded (may give clues?)

Tried checking the Boot log option and restarting when prompted. And though while booting up I was given an additional option to Boot Log (which I selected), nothing changed that I know of. How might I expect this option to work, and where might I expect the log to be saved to once I actually get it done?

Quote:

When did this start happening vs. when you put the newer hardware together? Were there driver updates between now and then (perhaps reaching for straws here)?

Like I said, the hardware was put in a couple months ago. This started happening just a couple days ago. Any driver updates were done within a week of getting the new parts installed.

Quote:

Reformatting is annoying, so I hope we can stumble into a solution for you before that point. Perhaps if a System Restore doesn't work for you the repair install will at least get you up and running with minimal setback.

I actually had to get a fresh Windows install when I put the new hardware in, complete with a wipe of everything on the hard drive (minus some things I specifically asked to be saved), due to some compatibility issues. This time around I've taken the liberty of saving my important files on a flash drive so if I need to wipe everything again I don't actually stand to lose anything but time.

That said, an hour of searching has turned up no trace of my Vista install disc, so I have no idea where to go from here.

At the very least I'm pretty curious now.

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Originally Posted by Loyal (Post 1176109)

I have no way of knowing how to check this sort of thing, or to be more precise I don't really know how to interpret any of the data presented by msconfig. Explain please?

Tried checking the Boot log option and restarting when prompted. And though while booting up I was given an additional option to Boot Log (which I selected), nothing changed that I know of. How might I expect this option to work, and where might I expect the log to be saved to once I actually get it done?

To the first:
Basically, you can look in the Startup tab of msconfig to see what is being launched and executed whenever you boot into Windows and your account. All of the entries in this tab are either pulled from the appropriate place in the registry or the Startup folder in the Windows Start Menu. Things like your video card's control panel, if it has one, antivirus and firewall agents, utilities for your audio and USB and the like [if applicable], and so on. However other unnecessary things can get in there, as well.

Though to be fair it's probably unhelpful for me to just say "lol check for non-ordinary things" like I did. But this can give you an idea of what is trying to start whenever you log in, and you may see something that catches your eye. You can always do a search on the items listed to learn more about it if it's not immediately obvious (e.g. I have an entry that says "COMODO Internet Security" that I can immediately identify as my firewall, which loads at boot; I also have "CTxfiHlp.exe" with no description [though I know that's for the Creative X-Fi card I have] but which is easily identified by searching for it online).

It may be that this is a red herring -- I was just kind of brainstorming ideas.

To the second:
There should be a file created from booting with the boot log option checked. It would be C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt. Opening and reading the lines in this file, you'd see a lot of things like

Loaded driver <some name>
Loaded driver <some other drive>
Did not load <whatever it did not load>

etc. I could also send you into the Event Viewer to look at any logs or errors there, but at this point I have no idea if that would even be helpful or is something you'd gain anything from. Just kind of thinking aloud, so to say.