New
#1
Complete lockup (no BSOD), icon corruption, folder settings forgotten
Hello All,
My Win7 computer is having all sorts of problems, so much so that I am wondering how many issues are behind it. They have gradually grown over a long period of time.
The most visible symptoms are:
- Icon corruption in the form of random icon overlays (like the 'shortcut' symbol, but for almost anything from a command box to a firewall symbol.)
- Folders forget view settings and thumbnails
- Newly added/moved files don't always show up in the folder
- Explorer sometimes very slow to refresh, with the green progress indicator along the top of a window taking minutes to do the last 5 or 10%
- Explorer often seems to use a lot of CPU even when not apparently doing anything.
Other things also seem to drive CPU up when I am not doing anything:
When I take a look at processes / task manager, and show processes from all users, I see MsMpEng.exe there (looking now its using 37% CPU, and varying around 80 Mb memory.)
After reading favourable reviews I bought and ran Auslogics BoostSpeed, which incorporates a registry fixer. It found literally thousands of registry errors, but the system was no different after I let it fix them. (I found online articles implicating registry issues for the forgetful folders)
I never get a full BSOD, (so no dumps), but it does sometimes freeze completely. By completely I mean that the display stays on, the mouse stops moving, no respose to any keyboard combination, if sound is playing the note hangs but keeps going. This happens every few days.
Things I have noticed about when it happens:
- It happens if I am using the PC or not.
- It is independent of temperature, (I had the temperature logging, and examined files after a crash).
- I can spot no particular software activity that correlates with it.
- I've tried disconnecting all sorts of USB devices in the hope of identifying one of them as the culprit, no luck.
- It seems that if a crash happens when I am out , if I turn the monitor on when I get back there is no display. I'm not sure if this means the crash may be different from a lockup while I am using it, when the display remains active.
- I have checked the system logs, there are no messages giving info, just something about restarting after an unexpected problem, (that's from memory, sorry I don't have the exact text to hand).
All clues very gratefully received,
Nick