Before making this thread, a virus was sort of my first thought. Because my computer absolutely refused to run an SFC scan no matter what I did. So I ran a program called Vipre Rescue which does a full scan of the drive. It turned up nothing. Although Greg said he's never heard of that program before. Have you heard of it?
I never got a chance to use Malwarebytes sadly. I'll gladly download and use it after the disk check ends, though.
Jim I would run malwarebytes but also seriously consider running gmer (from www.gmer.net) because if you have an infected partition the root kit could still be lurking in there.
I'm hoping to get a guru like gregrocker to chime in on using gmer or even tdsskiller another root kit destroyer.
Just a quick update, the disk check completed and found no problems.
I'm having a bit of trouble installing the correct drivers. I can't access internet because I need a certain driver for it, so I downloaded the driver to my flash drive... but I have no idea how to install the driver from there. There's a lot of folders and I have no idea what to do...
As stated in my steps for a Perfect Reinstall, you should put your wireless driver on a stick so you can get online quickly after install (if the driver isn't provided) to Update your drivers.
Easiest is to find the Setup .exe file and rightclick to Run as Admin, install the driver and then later turn it's software package off in msconfig>Startup along with everything else except your AV.
Some drivers may need to be extracted (unzipped) to a folder, then in Device manager click on the device, choose Update driver, Browse to the folder where it was extracted until it picks up the driver.
Once you connect to the internet, run Windows Updates a few times to see what drivers it delivers before importing any from your computer's Support Downloads webpage.
I had a very similar experience a couple of weeks ago. Laptop fell off my lap while Windows was shutting down. I experienced a lot of the symptoms you are. Because the laptop was dropped I immediately suspected the hard drive was damaged. I ran a chkdsk and it said all was well. Clearly it wasn't. The logs in Event Viewer showed a different story though and had several disk errors starting from after the laptop was dropped. I replaced the hdd and now all is well.
My suggestion is to have a quick peek in Event Viewer from time to time as you're moving ahead with your re-installation. Have a look at the system logs to see if there are any disk warnings or errors (or other warnings or errors). If things start to slow down again or not work well you might get some clues there.
Good luck.
How many drivers in Optional Updates?
So someone has gone through the same frustrations as me?
Thanks for the advice. I looked at the system logs and did find some errors. I have no idea if those will indicate that my HD is failing, but I'm going to post the errors so hopefully someone can determine that for me.
1. The windows update service terminated with the following error: %%-2147467243
2. The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1
There are two errors like the above one. Two seconds later, there is info concerning the error: "Driver management has concluded the process to add service umbus for device instance ID UMB\UMB\1&841921D&0&WPDBUSENUMROOT with the following status: 0"
Not a good sign, I take it?
3. The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0
I get about 13 errors like this, all at the same time. Then further up the list, AT LEAST another 2 dozen of the same message.
4. The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because of an IO failure on volume C:.
^^^
This always comes after a batch of errors like the one listed in #3.
5. This one's kind of long, so I'll just describe it. Pretty much tells me that Microsoft Antimalware encountered an error trying to update signatures.
^^^
Got this error 9 times in a row. Then a few seconds later got the same error 5 times in a row.
6. The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR2
^^^
Got 6 errors in a row like this one. Again, it mentioned the HD, except this time it pertains to DR2 instead of DR1. I have a bad feeling...
7. The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR3
^^^
There is only one error like this one.
8. The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR4
9. Another Microsoft Antimalware error. This time it had to do with behavior monitoring, and it failed. However, it also mentioned the reason for this is because I need the latest definition updates for it.
That's all of them. The ones concerning my harddrive are particularly concerning. Are those errors signs of a failing HD?
None. There are only three optional updates to my surprise.gregrocker said:
Quote