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Programs failing to launch after boot, followed by BSOD
Hello
Posted this on Windows support community but with no response so far, found these forums that seem to be very active so was hoping to get a little help.
Have been having trouble with my PC lately. I've searched for answers a few times already and although others have had similar problems I haven't been able to find anything particularly helpful as of yet.
About a week ago I started having a problem after booting into Windows 7. Programs wouldn't load for the first minute or so. I could click the icon in the taskbar (e.g. Chrome) and it would flash momentarily then disappear and not load up, though Task Manager would show the process was running. After a little while the problem would stop and eventually everything would load fine, though once this caused my computer to become unresponsive (though the mouse would still move and I could open the start menu) after the programs crashed and I couldn't kill the processes in task manager. On the next boot, I was prompted to run CHKDSK and did so, with no errors found.
Generally, though, after 2 minutes or so my computer operated without issue, though I did notice that it didn't seem to enter into Sleep Mode properly as normally the fans on my computer would turn off, but had stopped doing so.
This was followed by a BSOD I just got with the message:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Which I understand is normally due to a driver or hardware issue. This is a fairly fresh install of Windows, I think no more than 6 months old. This was because one of the hard drives I bought with the computer failed, so I installed a fresh copy on a new drive. I haven't added and new hardware lately nor changed any of the drivers to my knowledge since. I'm not adverse to a clean install though if necessary.
I am running a full virus scan with the Microsoft Safety Scanner right now, I normally run AVG Free. Not sure what might be useful to post - there's a whole bunch of errors in Event Viewer, and a MEMORY.DMP file in my Windows folder. I'm downloading memtest86 right now and will run it tomorrow since I'm running the virus scan right now.
Should mention I'm booted into Safe Mode and the above problem with slow booting of programs didn't occur.
Thanks for any advice in advance!
An update:
Have almost finished running the 4th iteration of memtest86 and no errors found, and Microsoft Safety Scanner found no viruses on a full scan (in safe mode). Having browsed a few similar threads on this forum it seems a system restore might help which I haven't tried yet - will give that a go once memtest86 has finished its 4th pass.
Any thoughts? Would be much appreciated!