Speakers Make Occasional Pop/click noise independent of volume

My first thought was a weak battery (still could be), but when you mentioned stopping the hibernation, what that did was stop the thrashing/preparation the HDD had to do in order to prepare itself for hibernation, and that removed the slowness you noticed.

I prefer hybrid mode, but that might not be available on your d7 because it is a notebook.
You might be able to do it here, see the Tip box at the beginning: Hibernate - Enable or Disable

On your 1st edit:
Continue with the other scans if you didn't install the keygen it has got to be harmful, you did remove it didn't you?

Don't despair, MSE will take a long time on its first full scan.

2nd edit:
Ah...The joys of living abroad....Glad to hear System restore is working.

System restore didn't help. The thrashing started again, this time not until a while after I'd unplugged/replugged the system [EDIT: I just noticed that my cord slipped out without my noticing. Maybe the battery IS going bad.] Once more though hibernation helped to stop it.

At least I think it's hibernation. I press the power button. Is that hibernation or sleep? Either way it works.

EDIT: Oh, I should mention that I keep my laptop plugged in a lot. Always have. Could that be bad for the battery?

TheZman said:

System restore didn't help. The thrashing started again, this time not until a while after I'd unplugged/replugged the system [EDIT: I just noticed that my cord slipped out without my noticing. Maybe the battery IS going bad.] Once more though hibernation helped to stop it.

You can check the battery with the: HP Battery Health Center, and did you mean you shut Hibernation off again?

TheZman said:

At least I think it's hibernation. I press the power button. Is that hibernation or sleep? Either way it works.

It depends on how the button is configured, see: Power Plan Settings - Change

TheZman said:

EDIT: Oh, I should mention that I keep my laptop plugged in a lot. Always have. Could that be bad for the battery?

I haven't found if it is on your d7, but it should have a regulator that stops charging when the battery reaches 100%, but maybe not.

• Remove the battery if the notebook will be plugged into AC power continuously (via a wall adapter or docking station) for more than 2 weeks.

Note: Recommendations for battery use and storage are covered in the HP User Guides for each model.

Source, under Battery Care Practices: HP Battery Health Center

Where do you stand now with the performance of your d7?

You still need to run malware scans, right?

Then you will probably still have problems with spiking, sleep, hibernation, restoring your system, etc.

It would be better if you cut your losses, and did a: Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7, yes it is a little involved, but no more so than what you are putting up with now. There is information at the bottom for HP users if you decide to do it

Anak said:

Where do you stand now with the performance of your d7?

You still need to run malware scans, right?

Then you will probably still have problems with spiking, sleep, hibernation, restoring your system, etc.

It would be better if you cut your losses, and did a: Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7, yes it is a little involved, but no more so than what you are putting up with now. There is information at the bottom for HP users if you decide to do it

Hell no. At least not yet. Here, I've got a cousin back home that used to work for geek squad. I'll have him look at it before I wipe my computer. I've gotten out of worse problems than this before without having to do a factory reset. And that was on a dell with 75 gigs of memory space.

I haven't tried the other methods you mentioned yet anyway. It could be one of my 22 out-of-date drivers. The only reason I haven't updated them is because Driver Detective won't tell me how. Just that I need to update them and that I must register if I want to update with Driver Detective directly. One of which is labled USB device. I think it's fingerprint recognition software.

If you haven't tried my other methods especially updating drivers, then it would be difficult to impossible to try, and help while you are incurring these malware infections.

Thank you for letting me know you have not been adhering to my instructions.

If you do not want to use Driver Detective, and do it the hard way there are several ways:

• Use the HP Software Update tool or HP Support Assistant to find updates automatically: Software & Driver Downloads HP Pavilion dv7-6135dx Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

• Use this as a guide: Installing and updating drivers in 7

• And: Driver Reference Table (DRT)

• It is usually better if you do not use the Device Driver native app to install drivers.

Please, let me know the outcome of your cousin's assistance...

Well, I haven't had any thrashing in the past week, and I just got home a few days ago. I may have adware though. I removed 35 items with MBAM but I'm not sure whether or not it's self-replicating as I had to remove the same items a while back, but it was before a system restore. At the same time, MBAM didn't find anything immedietely after the restore so I'm not entirely sure what to think. I have been getting some blank ads in the corner despite using adblock.

I've attached an MBAM log from when it was still infected. Quick-scanned a few times since (The items were detected in a quick scan) and it hasn't detected anything.

EDIT: Spybot picked up a few things. Here's the log for that as well. I had scanned earlier but forgot to set it to run as administrator. The only other things it had picked up though were a few tracking cookies that it removed without administrator permission. Superantispyware found cookies as well, and removed them, though I haven't fully scanned with it yet.

EDITED EDIT: jZip toolbar keeps coming back.