Laptop suddenly slow & unresponsive, able to boot only in Safe Mode

Please help! I'm at the end of the rope for my laptop. Here are the specs:

Dell Inspiron 1545
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core Duo @ 2.20GHz
4.00 GB

Bought this laptop a year ago, worked perfectly up until around July 2012 when it suddenly failed to boot. Eventually in August it reached the point where I had reformat it using the recovery disks I made a year ago, bringing it back to factory settings.

The disks are NOT the installation disks!

After that it worked fine, until I booted it again on 9/6/12 only to find it completely slow and unresponsive, a window even appeared telling me Windows Explorer was unresponsive, etc., etc. Now it can only boot up to the login screen, but if I try to log on it'll get stuck at the "Welcome" screen. Which brings me to safe mode only. Here's the situation now:

- Virus scan with Microsoft Security Essentials came up with nothing
- Event Viewer gave me hundreds of Service Control Manager errors with Error ID 7001
- I did a disk check, it repaired the bad clusters but the problem still remains

What is going on??? Is it a hard drive failure? It hasn't made any strange noises, in fact it's sounded the same ever since I bought it. The loudest sound it makes is when it turns the fan on.

Even if I can't fix it, can somebody please help tell me what exactly went wrong so I can hopefully avoid it next time?

Hello Aitalas and welcome to Seven Forums.

Couple of things you could try. Microsoft Security Essentials is good, but no anti-malware product is 100% effective 100% of the time. (If there was such a thing we'd all be using it.) I'd suggest running two additional free on-demand scanners. Malwarebytes can be run in Safe Mode. Windows Defender Offline will be a bootable disc or flash drive that will begin scanning your computer before Windows 7 boots.

Malwarebytes

Windows Defender Offline

Once the scans are completed I'd try running a system file checker scan from an elevated command prompt (option two, first tutorial.) If any problems are found, run the scan 3 times rebooting in between each scan. The scan can be run from Safe Mode or in a command prompt at boot.

System File Checker

SFC /SCANNOW : Run in Command Prompt at Boot

If boot issue is still unresolved, one of the Forum experts prepared two troubleshooting tutorials that may help.

Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7

Please post back if anything helped or not.

Hi, sorry for the late reply. School crept up on me and I ended up forgetting for a bit.

Anyways, the next time I booted up the computer it blue-screened (despite being set to automatically boot in Safe Mode), so I thought it was pretty much dead if the way it kept restarting and blue-screening was any indication. I reformatted it yesterday for the heck of it and it managed to get me back to factory settings, but it still lags on boot and windows explorer would still become unresponsive sooo... back to Safe Mode lol.

I ran the sfc /scannow and Windows says there were no integrity violations. I haven't installed any new program at all except for Malwarebytes since this reformat, so I ran a full scan and it froze shortly later. I can still move my mouse but apparently even Safe Mode is becoming unresponsive...

It can't be a virus/infection though can it? Since I reformatted it twice. I'd hate to think that there are viruses that can persist even through that. All in all I'm fairly convinced my HDD itself is dying if reformatting and disk checking/virus scanning hasn't helped. Bummer.

Unlikely that it's malware related based on the reformatting. Yes, it could be hardware related considering the SFC showed no integrity violations. But not just the HDD. Could be a failing memory module (or a module not seated properly), the motherboard, etc. Did you run the troubleshooting steps? I realize they're time consuming but they could help to pinpoint the specific issue.

I haven't yet but I will run them now. I downloaded Memtest86 for the USB stick and I'll be rebooting now. Here's for the best ^^