Programs not responding

[thespyder]

Recently I have started to see an issue with my computer. First of all, everything seems to have slowed down considerably. Second, often times double clicking on the desktop icons will not do anything.

Most concerning is that, after the computer has been on for an hour or more, it will stop responding. Programs that are working (IE, Even the Start menu) will not respond for several minutes or even at all.

The light which indicates the hard drive access will have a slow steady pulse, but will not show any activity when attempting to activate. And program responses get worse and worse until they are acting like they are resident on a poor connectivity network and will time out entirely.

I have downloaded the Seagate tools application as my primary Drive is a Seagate ATA 1TB drive. All of the routine checks on both drives reveal nothing. I have also run Malware scans, PC Tools Spyware scan and even defragged the hard drives recently.

Any idea what is causing the issue? or how to diagnose it? There is no consistency on what programs will stop working. I have checked the task manager and not seen anything that causes CPU spike, nor significant memory issues.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bubbaleone]

What you describe sounds very symptomatic of rootkit and/or boot sector virus activity. They are hidden from the Windows APIs, so you'll never see any errors in Event Viewer.

The newest varieties can't be detected or eliminated from within the Windows environment. You have to run detection, and removal, at the disk level. The apps you ran are OK for nuisance stuff but they can't even see these types of infections, for the same reason Event Viewer sees no errors.

Kaspersky's Rescue Disk 10 is the most effective tool you can get. Burn the ISO to CD then reboot. Once loaded it will prompt you to update. It will download the latest virus definitions then use those definitions to scan your system. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the GUI, and all the available settings, before running the scan.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10

 

[thespyder]

Yeah, I suspected it might be a virus. Basically where my computer used to be a jet engine, now it is like a puttering moter boat that runs out of gas.

 

[sm625]

Open task manager. Enable the cpu time column. Let the computer run for a couple hours. Get a screen capture and post it. We want to see what processes are running and how much time they are consuming, relative to your idle time.

 

[thespyder]

So ran the Kaspersky Rescue software last night. It found a HEUR Trogan. Only the software wouldn't quarantine it. It was recommended to leave it alone? Not sure why that would be.

Any ideas on how to remove it from my system?

 

[Bubbaleone]

So ran the Kaspersky Rescue software last night. It found a HEUR Trogan. Only the software wouldn't quarantine it. It was recommended to leave it alone? Not sure why that would be.

Any ideas on how to remove it from my system?

Did you select all areas to scan? (That is, the boot sector, memory, and hidden files, in addition to the drive/s you selected). What did you set the other scan parameters to?

To sum it up: Kaspersky's heuristic engine has detected an as yet unidentified malware. It won't quarantine or delete for that reason. You have to make the decision.

If you haven't already rebooted back into Windows, you'll have to manually do the selection, and tell Kaspersky to delete the files. If you are back in Windows, answer my questions in the first paragraph and we'll go from there.

 

[thespyder]

so I booted into their UI. Ran the update and then rebooted again into their UI. Then ran a scan. Full scan on all selected (Boot area, Windows files, All Drives). It ran the better part of 4 hours. Compiled a report.

when i clicked on 'Detected' it listed a bunch of stuff related to HEUR Trogan. I selected "<Fix/Repair>" whatever that button is. it came up with pop-ups that gave me three choices.

Quarantine (greyed out and unselectable) - not supported
Remove/Delete
Leave alone (recommended)

Not sure why it was recommending to leave the files alone. Made no sense to me. so I selected the remove/delete every time.

Am going back tonight to re-run the scan and see if it finds them again, or new ones.

also did some research on HEUR trogan. The symptoms are not what I was experiencing. I didn't see changes in my wallpaper. I did get slower and slower access to my internet but attributed that to generally the computer slowing WAY down.

What I was seeing was incredibly slow start up followed by slower and slower response on application start up until finally applications stopped responding at all (usually after about an hour). Like a car running out of gas. More accurately it felt like a HUGE memory leak such that there was no memory to run anything. Only Task manager didn't show anything of the sort.

anyway, thanks for the continued help. Please let me know what else you would suggest.

 

[Bubbaleone]

...Please let me know what else you would suggest.

When Kaspersky detects a HEUR file, it means a malware that as yet is unidentified (also known as "in the wild") by Kaspersky Labs. It won't go any further than telling you about it. You have to make the decision about what to do with it. But you've got excellent tools to deal with it. Use the scan log-files for file locations.

Reload and set Rescue 10's Scan level to High, set disinfect/delete to Upon Detection. Click the Settings button and set Heuristic Analysis to max...Just set everything to max. When you're done configuring, close it for now.

Open Dolphin File Manager, click Settings, click Configure Dolphin. Go through all the tabs and settings. At minimum select show hidden, copy to/move to, expandable folders, etc. Choose settings that will give the most opportunity to be able to view and work with files. Dolphin will let you do just about anything you can do with Explorer.

You've also got Kaspersky's Registry Editor so you can search for related registry entries if need be. Now, rerun the scan...

 

[thespyder]

Ah, HEUR is a generic term. Any reasearch I found on it may not apply to the version that I found?

I will go back and do as you suggest. Ugh, I bet someone is getting a real laugh at my expense.

 

[thespyder]

Issues still abound. Last night I didn't have time to re-scan, but I did experience issues. So I know that the issue still exists.

Plan on taking some time this weekend and tweaking the tools. Maybe a second run will get me somewhere?

Failing that, is it suggested that I reformat and reinstall OS? Or is there another option before reaching that point?

 

[Ketchup]

If you have extra room on the hard drive, you could create a new partition in Disk Management and install Windows 7 on that partition. That should narrow down an issue with the hard drive, or an issue with your particular installation.

Oh, and don't forget to try swapping in a new SATA cable.

 

[thespyder]

If you have extra room on the hard drive, you could create a new partition in Disk Management and install Windows 7 on that partition. That should narrow down an issue with the hard drive, or an issue with your particular installation.

Oh, and don't forget to try swapping in a new SATA cable.

so please help me understand this. Are you thinking that there could be a hardware issue with the hard drive? Or the SATA cable?

Admittedly I don't want to have to get back to clean install all over again, particularly if I end up finding out it is a hardware issue after all. so I guess check everything.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Try Malwarebytes; it's a better scan than Kaspersky.

Honestly though, that sounds like a failing hard drive to me. Hard drives that are going bad tend to start "thrashing" before they actually fail. Are you noticing any grinding or whining noises? Any heat?

 

[thespyder]

Try Malwarebytes; it's a better scan than Kaspersky.

Honestly though, that sounds like a failing hard drive to me. Hard drives that are going bad tend to start "thrashing" before they actually fail. Are you noticing any grinding or whining noises? Any heat?

I have and use Malwarebytes. I have to try running in safe mode and running a scan (computer tanked when I ran it in normal mode).

As for a bad hard drive, that was my first concern. I downloaded the Seagate tool and checked both of my HDs. The both passed. And there isn't any grinding (like I have experienced before with failing HDs). But the HD light does a regular heartbeat pulse. And attempting to activate applications (which normally causes traffic to the HD) don't activate anything additional.

 

[Ketchup]

Every hard drive that has died on my has never made a grinding noise. And did you run the seatools from the bootable CD or from within windows? Finally, I had a Maxtor that got extremely slow. It showed no errors, so at first I didn't know it was the problem.

Anyway, from what you are describing, it sounds like requests aren't even making it to the hard drive. That leads me to suspenct the SATA cable, memory, or possibly a virus/rootkit that cannot be removed. I have encountered computers that have had been infected too long for malware to be completely removed.

So, in short, try the SATA cable first. The fresh install on another partitian would let you know if the malware was your problem. It would be a lot faster than a full backup and reinstalling everything, but that is just what I would do.

 

[thespyder]

I ran Malwarebytes again last night. Full scan came up with nothing at all. then ran Kaspersky again, hit on 22 items. Deleted all of them. Will run a further scan tonight and possibly try replacing SATA drive.

 

[Bubbaleone]

I ran Malwarebytes again last night. Full scan came up with nothing at all. then ran Kaspersky again, hit on 22 items. Deleted all of them. Will run a further scan tonight and possibly try replacing SATA drive.

Before you run Kaspersky Rescue 10 again, I'd suggest opening a command prompt in safe mode and running chkdsk with these switches:

>chkdsk [drive letter]: /x /v /f /r

If you have more than one partition or drive, run CHKDSK for each one. I suggest this for this reason: There's a good chance that the volume/s bitmap is being incorrectly reported which causes a range of errors. CHKDSK will report this error: "CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the master file table (MFT) bitmap". CHKDSK will fix this.

 

[Bubbaleone]

I ran Malwarebytes again last night. Full scan came up with nothing at all. then ran Kaspersky again, hit on 22 items. Deleted all of them. Will run a further scan tonight and possibly try replacing SATA drive.

When Kaspersky Rescue 10 finally reports zero detections, odds are there will be damaged system files that need to be repaired or replaced for the system to run correctly. Use the command line SFC (System File Checker) tool for this task. You'll need the full installation disk (not a restore disk).

In XP open a command prompt in safe mode and type:

>sfc /scannow

Insert the XP installation CD when prompted.

In Windows 7, corrupt or missing system files may prevent Windows from booting normally. I'd suggest running SFC via the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE):

How to Run the System File Checker (sfc.exe) Offline in Windows 7 and Vista

If some corrupt files are not succesfully repaired, these procedures from Microsoft will allow you to manually identify and repair the files:

How to use the System File Checker tool to troubleshoot missing or corrupted system files on Windows Vista or on Windows 7

 

[thespyder]

Ran Chkdsk last night on my secondary drive. No issues reported. Unable to run on primary drive because it was 'in use'??

anyway, ran kaspersky scan. Zero issues reported. Going to spend some time this weekend checking out the system more fully.

Thanks a lot for all of your suggestions so far. Hopefully in the home stretch now.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Did you run CHKDSK from the command prompt? The /x switch tells Windows to dismount the volume. If the volume is in use it will prompt if you would like to run CHKDSK on the next reboot. Type Y (yes), reboot, and CHKDSK will run on that volume.

 

[thespyder]

so, update.

Ran Chkdsk on both drives. No issues found. Ran Kaspersky again. No issues found. Ran PC Tools scan. It ran for about 2 hours and got 30% complete before the computer slowed down and all but discontinued processing the scan. It identified 4 low risk zero day threats.

I am running out of options and am really wondering if my primary drive is overheating.

What I am experiencing now is that, after running for a while, everything slows down. I don't get error messages, but when I double click on an icon, the normal box will appear around the icon. Then it will simply fade away like the application failed to even initiate. And if I try to shut down, the computer will take about 10 minutes to actually shut down my desktop and then it will hang on the windows screen infinitely until I hard boot it off.

I guess my main question at this point is, is it worth it to go pick up a new hard drive and install from scratch? I figure that I could reformat and reinstall the OS on my existing hardware, but if the Hard drive is overheating, that may mean that I am wasting all of that time and effort.

 

[Ketchup]

What is your CPU usage like when the slowdown occurs? Do you have anything to monitor temps? CPU, hard drive, etc?

 

[thespyder]

Neither CPU nor Memory usage is unusually high at these times that I have observed. it is often difficult to tell since once the problem starts, even getting into task manager is almost impossible. But I have run a few tests where I ran task manager all along and didn't encounter anything.

I also noticed yesterday that programs that are already running don't have as pronounced an issue, althought they do slow down significantly (PC Tools anti-spyware sat at ~3 hours projected completion time for over 5 hours).

 

[thespyder]

Update.

So some additional testing and still no closer to a solution. Any additional thought from anyone?

I am more and more thinking that this is a hardware failure. I have since, swapped out the SATA cable to no improvement. And ran compressed air over various components. Plus i ensured that my fans are all running optimally.

I figure that it is not my CPU failing as that would mean I would get periodic shut downs, which I am not getting. And I have tested my memory several ways, so i figure that can't be the issue either.

Is it reasonable that the Hard drive is failing? And that the symptom is a read error when accessing the drive? I am not getting random memory errors or any sort of unusual noise coming from the drive itself. But if the spin mechanism is failing it might have trouble speeding up? Or am I reaching? I tried some basic searches on the internet and haven't found any real way to verify this theory.

Additionally, everyone here has been great help and I am very appreciative. but i am wondering if i should take my rig into one of the PC repair shops in my area and try that. Any thoughts on that direction? pros I figure are that they may diagnose something I missed. Cons are that I may very well pay them a bunch of money, be out a PC for a week and then have to build a new PC anyway.

 

[Bubbaleone]

....Cons are that I may very well pay them a bunch of money, be out a PC for a week and then have to build a new PC anyway.

Get Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test Version 4.16. Download the CD Image and burn it to CD. Read the User's Guide, test your HDD. Don't be concerned that the tool is from Hitachi. It'll run on any mfgs. HDD. If the drive's headed south, this tool will let you know.

If the HDD's on it's last legs get this excellent freeware cloning tool: EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition 2.3.1

This tool has a built-in burning feature, it can automatically create a bootable CD/DVD or USB disk, and creates a sector by sector copy: A physical 1:1 copy (clone) of your existing HDD to a new HDD. Be sure to disconnect the old drive before booting the new cloned HDD.