Slow startup, software crashes, virus scan hangs, critical errors, etc

[Eightflower]

Lots of problems with my machine over the past several days, I'm not sure where to begin. First noticed the problems when winamp kept crashing while playing and/or loading music. Tried to restart, and experienced several startup hangs in a row (all on the "Starting Windows" screen) of over 10 minutes each. Tried system restore several times with several different recent restore points, but THAT kept giving me different errors each time. Finally the computer re-booted, I'm not sure why since system restore seemingly never completed.

Now that I'm back in Windows, I'm scared to attempt another re-boot. Trying to diagnose the problem, but I have no idea what to do. Virus scan hung after 10 minutes. In Computer Management - System Tools, the Event Viewer shows over 900 events in the past 24 hours, over 2000 in the past 7 days. The Administrative Events page lists all manner of Warnings, Errors, and Critical events.

Given all of the above, I'm surprised the OS is even working well enough for me to post this. I'm in over my head trying to figure it out. What should I do?

Edit: I ran the SevenForums diagnostic tool and attached the results to this thread.

Also just noticed another symptom: Windows aren't automatically refreshing. I.e. when I downloaded the diagnostic tool it didn't appear on the desktop until I hit F5. Same thing when it created my diagnostics txt files, and when I changed its name. Changes don't appear in windows until they're refreshed manually. WTF is happening?

Edit 2: Realized I didn't let the diagnostic tool run fully last time. Re-uploading zip file.

 

[Eightflower]

Update: Notepad just crashed. That doesn't seem right.

 

[paul1149]

I haven't looked at your file, but the first thing I would do is copy over all your data to a safe place. Then I would do a chkdsk /r scan of the drive.

 

[Eightflower]

I haven't looked at your file, but the first thing I would do is copy over all your data to a safe place. Then I would do a chkdsk /r scan of the drive.

Thanks for responding! My data drive is separate from my OS drive, and all my data is backed up automatically to a separate (third) hard drive on a weekly basis. I actually did manage to run an error scan of the OS drive on a reboot. There were no errors found.

 

[paul1149]

Ok. The next thing I would do is a diagnostic boot or boot into Safe Mode, and see how it performs there. Diagnostic boot is set by going to Start / Run (Winkey-r) and typing in MSCONFIG. Then I believe it's on the Boot tab.

Then I would do a System File Check. This can be done from within windows, but it might be more effective from a repair disk.

 

[Eightflower]

Well, that was an adventure. I applied a diagnostic boot in msconfig, and tried to restart. Got a hang on the "logging off" screen. After 10 minutes, I performed a hard shutdown, then powered back up again. Selected boot into safe mode with networking.

First attempt to boot into safe mode failed with a hang on the "Loading Windows Files" screen, while it was trying to load DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS. After 10 minutes of that, performed another hard shutdown.

Attempted to boot from my Windows 7 OS DVD. Drivers for the OS disk weren't detected, so I chose the only available option, which was to restore an earlier system image.

Re-imaging failed, with an error message that "No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found" (even though I image my system disk along with my backing up my data weekly).

Then it gave me a few different recovery options. I tried a Startup Repair, and declined system restore because I'd already done that. After two restarts, I finally got a "Starting Windows" screen. After ~20 minutes, it did finally boot into safe mode.

Ran cmd as admin, then sfc/scannow. Result was "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. It also produced a CBS.log file, although for some reason I can't upload that (every time I try it says I "don't have permission to open this file," and I can't figure out how to give myself administrator permission to perform the upload, either here or on a 3rd party file sharing site). Re-booted into windows unsafe mode (after another 20 minutes on the "Starting Windows" screen).

Not sure if all of that did anything helpful, but at least now I'm a little more confident that my system will startup, albeit with a 20-minute OS load time.

While I was typing this up I went ahead and ran the SF Diagnostic tool again. The result is attached.

What should I try next?

 

[paul1149]

That's the reason SFC is better from the WinRE disk, when possible. This driver thing sounds weird, unless you have some exotic HD housing the C partition. When you ran the chkdsk, did you use the /r flag, which finds and reallocates bad sectors? The standard chkdsk will not do this, and can return a healthy report, when it is not.

I would test the drive at this point. If you can plug it into another windows machine, download the HD maker's test utility, or Seatools for Windows. Or download an older free edition of bootable Parted Magic and run GSmartControl. Either way, do the extended test.

At this point I would consider a Reset or a fresh install of Windows. But I would want to make sure the hard drive is healthy first. It's good you have backups.

Also, make sure all the hard drives are being seen. Check the BIOS, or windows Disk Management. You might pull and reseat the drive and the RAM.

 

[Eightflower]

I'm having trouble even checking the hard drive with Parted Magic. I don't think I have the equipment to test my C drive with my laptop, so I downloaded a free Parted Magic iso and burned it to a CD. Booted from the CD. That gives me a few different options to boot into Parted Magic, none of which complete booting:

I tried "Default Settings 64" first, since I have a 64-bit system. It loaded a few things and then hung on "Starting NFS Daemons." After waiting 5 minutes or so I performed a hard reboot.

Next I tried ""Live With Default Settings 64." This time it hung on "Searching for PMAGIC_2013_02_28.SQFS"

Next up was "Default Settings 32." Again it hung on "Searching for PMAGIC_2013_02_28.SQFS"

Finally I tried "Live With Default Settings 32." This time it actually loaded the PMAGIC...SQFS thing, but hung on "Starting ALSA."​

I also messed around with a few of the other options on the bootable CD:

Under the extras menu, I tried "Check System RAM For Errors." That ran for awhile, seeming to perform a RAM check, but then (at about 7% completion), the screen started flashing pink/pink with weird characters on it, blinking between those two every second or so. I have pictures if it would be helpful.

I also tried something called a MHDD, and ran a SCAN command within it. The result was a "Drive Not Ready" message.

I also pulled and re-seated all of my hard drives and RAM. Nothing was loose though.

When I try to boot normally into the OS, my system is still hanging on the "Starting Windows" screen for upwards of 20 minutes before (sometimes) booting up. Actually, right now it doesn't look like it's going to boot into Windows at all. Guess I'll try another round of system restores or something.

I'm resigned to reinstalling Win7 at this point, but it seems like I might have a hardware problem too, though (perhaps several), don't you think? Since Parted Magic isn't working for me at all, what steps can I take to figure out what components need to be replaced, if any?

Or am I just using Parted Magic wrong somehow?

 

[paul1149]

Sometimes parted magic doesn't want to boot. I don't recall if there's a safe mode, or you may have to search for command line options upon booting (usually accessible via the Tab key at the menu screen). Failing that, there are other boot disks you could try: Hiren's, Ultimate boot disk for windows, etc. I would try to get into either a DOS or windows PE environment, and run Seatools for DOS from the first, or Seatools for windows or GSMARTControl from Windows PE. I would also run MemTest 86+ for several hours.

If you have another machine, and if it's a laptop a usb sata adapter, you can tether the drive to it and do the tests there from Windows.

Or you can go ahead with the reinstall and then test from there.

 

[Eightflower]

Well I just did manage to run two passes of Memtest86, no errors. So I guess I can rule out any RAM errors.

Which boot option should I be selecting in Parted Magic anyway? I might try it a few more times.

 

[paul1149]

Probably ok on RAM, but they do recommend hours of testing.

Not sure on Parted Magic. Would have to be in front of it. Recommend you do a search on it.