Member Avatar for IronMark

Hello - I am working on my son's Asus laptop running win-7. Booting into user mode, it's not running well at all - extremely slow to boot, Chrome runs very slowly - nothing runs well. In safe mode, it's not half bad. When I got this from him last week, I found out that somehow Avast got turned off a while back, so I ran a virus scan (nothing) and since then have run the Malicious software removal tool and Malware bytes - both showing nothing. I've run the tools as listed in the sticky on this forum (below) as well as HijackThis. I don't know enough about the tools to comment much, but the HijackThis log shows lots of BHOs and other oddities.

If someone wants to take a crack at getting this laptop straightened out, tell me what results you want to see and in what order.

Thank you all in advance

rgds - Mark

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Member Avatar for CimmerianX

boot into safe mode (f8 on startup)
run msconfig from START - RUN
Select Diagnostic startup
Reboot

Hows the performance now? If this is acceptable, then you can start turning on services little by little..... this is a lot of trial and error tying to hunt down an errand process, but it should help.

Or... some simple things to look for....
1) are there multiple AV or malware apps running?
2) are you loading multiple remote drives?
3) do you have a restore point you can revert to before the slowdown started.

commented: All excellent suggestions. +12
Member Avatar for IronMark

CimmerianX - thanks for the reply.
Somehow I lost my reply to you, I'll try to reconstruct it.

I did boot into diagnositic startup and it had no problem - no lag, but then nothing is running. I'm wondering if you could point me toward something that describes how I should go about adding services back - I could take a pretty good guess, but is there a good procedure?

To answer your questions - No, there aren't multiple AV's running, just Avast. And no, there aren't multiple networked drives to wait for in boot. Finally, I don't think my son has created a restore point ever.

I have the hijack-this log, I've embedded a link to it. I see lots of BHOs and there are also a number of missing files. I can get rid of the BHOs, but don't quite know what to do about missing files. I would rather not punt completely and start from scratch, but would like your opinion on this

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw6ukSgwu3y1Wm9tdXE4bEVJUUE/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for your help - Mark

Member Avatar for CimmerianX

Well, in MSCONFIG, there are startup items and services. Start with services. Begin by turning on a set of services, reboot, and test. If the PC is ok, go back to msconfig, turn on a few more services, reboot, and test. Rinse and repeat. If there is a service that is causing the issue, that will help you find it. IT is tedious, no doubt, but it will help find the problem.

You can also check your startup items and disable anything you don't need.

The fact that the PC is fine in diag mode definately points to a certain application causing your headache.

Nothing in the hijack this log jumps out at me (other than all the garbage for ie). The one thing is the Trend Micro Suite... If this is AV with malware, then this + Avast might be the culprit.

Member Avatar for IronMark

CimmerianX - thanks for the reply. I was investigating a recovery mode on the laptop last night and what I thought I was doing was an OS repair but what was really going on was an complete rewrite of the disk. the laptop is in perfect shape now, minus the programs needing to be reinstalled. The user area was backed up a short while back so my son didn't suffer a total loss.

Anyway, thank you for your help

rgds - Mark

Member Avatar for CimmerianX

No sweat... glad its working for you.

Member Avatar for RobertHDD

My sisters laptop got very laggy once and I tried scanning with Avira guess what 3 adware programs got found so i ran everything i could but no avail.
It might be that your PC too probably has multiple viruses in the system.

  1. Scan with every antivirus and remove them.
  2. Run TDSS Killer (Recommended)
  3. Run second time if required.
Member Avatar for IronMark

Thank you - I've had instances in the past where I thought that a system might be infected with some deeply-rooted bad stuff. I'll keep this in mind

Member Avatar for RobertHDD

I recommend that you keep a tool for future use its called Malwarebytes Anti Malware and if there's a problem in the future you know that tool will help well my jobs here is done PROBLEM SOLVED

Edited by RobertHDD because: N/a
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