Solved PC has went to Granny speed

[Britton30]

Hi friends, two days ago after waking from about a two hour Sleep (PC, not me) the PC went into granny slow-mo. Apps which had snapped open in less than a second are now taking 2-10 seconds. When highlighting text to Copy it, the context menu takes a few seconds to open. I get to see the spinning "busy" circle on most anything I try to do. even clicking on a program folder in the start menu, never saw this before.


I did install MSE along side Norton Security to see how they worked together, I uninstalled MSE and the performance is still crappy. My internet DL is 13-16 Mbs but pages are jerky when scrolling and the cursor sometimes lags a bit.
I have run CCleaner, Disk Clean up, Windows Defrag (took about an hour). I have seen a big CPU useage too, from 5-100% intermittently which was not there along with Trusted Installer writing to the HDD for several minutes after a reboot which is something new too.
All help. ideas, magic spells accepted.

 

[Lord Of The Mor]

Run Malwarebytes, and Spybot.

Ditch Norton, and got with AVG or Avast.

To me, it sounds like a malware/virus/trojan issue, and not a Defrag one. Also get a Registry cleaner and clean up the mess that may be in the registry.

Let us know how it goes down.

 

[Thorsen]

I would first check and see if Safe mode does the same thing.

Since you said pages on the internet are jerky it might be a video issue. Not sure what could change that quickly though just from installing two AV suites.

The newest Norton is rated pretty high so I wouldn't necessarily ditch it, but running two at the same time can bog a system down as they are both checking the same files.

Uninstalling MSE might have left something. if you have a restore point that might be the quickest option.

 

[Thorsen]

For the trustedinstaller thing, you could also disable auto updates temporarily to see if that gets the system back to speed

the installer might just be downloading and installing a big update and is taking system resources.

 

[Britton30]

Right, thanks. I'm not ditching Norton, it has caused no problems in the last 5 years. Norton is using little resources and not taking CPU cycles nor big writes/reads. I installed MSE as an experiment to see if, as has been said, it works well with other real-time security. It seemed to be fine until I put the PC to sleep.

I have run MalwareBytes AND Super AntiSpyware as well. Spybot is not friendly to Win 7.

As for updates, I usually get an icon in the Task bar notifying me updates are downloading, but nope.

If I run sfc /scannow it doesn't work. It runs for about 5-6 seconds, says it found files which can't be repaired, and the cbs.log has no useful info. The sfc issue has been present for several weeks, before this slowing.

I'm running sfc /verifyonly again, yesterday it hung at 82%

 

[Thorsen]

Hmmm hope you dont have to do a repair install, but if you have system files that are messed up that scannow cant fix you might have to.

Did you try a restore point? or running in Safe mode?

If you have to here are the steps for a repair install: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

Read all the tips and warnings first.

 

[Britton30]

Just finished trying repair install, doesn't work as the tut outlined. When getting to the restart, Windows can't find an image.sfc /verify only found corruptions, but no log geberated even though it said it did. May be in for a clean install.

 

[Golden]

Ouch. Bad luck mate. Perhaps a clean install is best? Can you give the sfc /scannow a few more go's? You said that its been an issue for while, which isn't usual.

Regards,
Golden

 

[Hopalong X]

I wonder if Nortons is damaged if a clash occured between it and MSE?

Maybe repair or delete and reinstall of Nortons? Just a guess though?

Just reimage using a Win System Image or Macrium or whatever one you use.



@ Repair Install.
Your Win 7 disk is a pre SP1 isn't it?

Repair install will not work with SP1 installed. Uninstall SP1 then do Repair install then download/reinstall SP1.

 

[karlsnooks]

1st try restoring to a restore point created earlier.

Please read Brink's tutorial on system restore.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

 

[Britton30]

thanks y'all. I'd tried a restore earlier and it said system Protection was turned off, bit it is not off. Weird eh? So no go with that.
Run sfc /scannow 37(?) times with same no result.

I don't think MSE or Norton caused the issue, all was well for several days until I put it to sleep. Yup my Win 7 DVD is pre-SP1, maybe the problem with the repair install, I left SP1 on.

I can't get Macrium nor windows back up image to reimage. I've never done reimaging before and probably missed a step. I had the image on an external drive, copied it back to the desktop. Windows can't find any stored back up, even with the external HDD plugged in.

 

[karlsnooks]

Do me a favor:
rb: | type SYSTEM RESTORE | ENTER

Choose a different restore point Radio Button | NEXT |
Check mark Show more restore points
highlight a desired restore point | Scan for affected programs button | Close

When you have a restore point that look good, then NEXT and so on and so forth.

 

[pparks1]

If system restore isn't working, but it's enabled, that most likely spells some type of malware that doesn't want you to get rid of it. Download a copy of the Microsoft stand alone system sweeper and see what that comes back with.

Here is the link to the tool I referenced;
http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

 

[karlsnooks]

Britton,
We also have a tutorial on using the StandAlone Sweeper.

This is the short write-up that I refer to when I need to refresh my memory on the procedure:
PUT SYSTEM SWEEPER ON A USB STICK


System Sweeper, https://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper, allows you to start an infected PC and perform an offline scan to identify and remove viruses, rootkits and other advanced malware. System Sweeper is a free standalone, bootable malware and virus remover from Microsoft.

Safety Scanner, Microsoft Safety Scanner - Remove Spyware, Malware, Viruses Free, is free, downloadable, provides on-demand scanning and helps remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It works with your existing antivirus software.

If the target computer has a working internet connection, then you may prefer to use the Safety Scanner.


Download System Sweeper (about 576 kB):
https://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

Insert 256 MB or larger USB stick into a usb port.

Run the downloaded program--mssstool64.exe or mssstool32.exe

Choose the option to install to USB.
Caution: The install program will format the usb stick.

The install program will download about 200 mB more.

After the install is finished, leave the stick in the usb slot.

Run the program you downloaded once again.

This 2nd run, and any subsequent runs, will download the very latest anti-virus definitions (about 60 mB).

To keep System Sweeper up-to-date, simply reinsert the usb stick and run the installation program again.

The initial, full scan by System Sweeper can easily take a couple of hours, but subsequent quick scans will take only a few minutes.

Remember, your computer is being very thoroughly checked for all types of malware.

The results of System Sweeper will be in:
\Windows\Standalone System Sweeper\Support as a file with a LOG extension. You can view this file with Notepad.

 

[Britton30]

Thanks Karl and Pparks, I just restored an image from 4 weeks ago with Macrium Reflect. system restore still showing as off, so I'll run the Stand alone sweeper tomorow, I already had it but had forogtten about it.

 

[karlsnooks]

system restore still showing as off,

Britton,

When you have a chance, could you make a snippet of this since I've never encountered this and I'm trying to understand what has happened.

 

[Britton30]

Sure Karl, here you are. In the first set is what I did have.


While I was here I went to configure and changed the restore setting to what is in the red box. With the one below, "Only restore previous versions of files" checked, I was getting the error in the above snips.

 

[karlsnooks]

OK.

What super-duper tuneup/speedup program turned off system restore? My problem was that I'd never seen a computer where system restore was disabled. The default for Win 7 is with System Restore enabled.

 

[win7clutz]

You’ve received great advice thus far and should continue your efforts if you need to protect your current install. It’s likely that if you succeed you will still have configuration issues that will haunt you in the future. It may be time to backup data and proceed to a fresh install.
All the best…

 

[Britton30]

OK.

What super-duper tuneup/speedup program turned off system restore? My problem was that I'd never seen a computer where system restore was disabled. The default for Win 7 is with System Restore enabled.

Nuttin honey
As you see, it was in fact turned on for my system drive. Then windows image restore said it couldn't find an image when I had one.

Ran mssstool and got a clean scan. Just before I restored my Macrium image Norton popped up and said it had removed some baddie. It was StoicJokesters T-Clock, which was presented in a thread here, but I'll have to find it and report it. It is a small program to change how the system clock is displayed in the task bar. Ran fine for several days, but apparently has some kind of time-bomb after running X days.

System now has it ol' teenage-like energy and speed again, although I'm still probably going to do a clean install real soon.
Thanks everyone!