Solved Possible Processor or HDD problem?

[Woodssi]

I am trying to fix an Acer Aspire 5552 lappy for a work colleague.

Browsing the files on the system is fine, but asking it to perform any sort of process brings up the spinning blue circle for a crazy amount of time.
(for example, asking for a Full Scan by Microsoft Security Essentials was cancelled after 8 hours as it had barely made it halfway through the run).

Even after a clean install (off of a new OS Disc, as the lappy's own Recovery Files seemed to be corrupted - Gave me an Error Message about an I/O Device Problem)the fault doesn't seem to have been rectified (so, that's why I'm now thinking it's Hardware....)

I DID manage to get SuperAntiSpyware to complete a run, and it showed NO DETECTIONS (although it took 45 minutes with several 'long pauses' en route).

Can anyone suggest how I can approach this, or point me towards some Diagnostic Solutions?

If I need to post any System Specs or Reports to assist, just let me know.

 

[seth500]

It sounds like the laptop hard drive is dying if the CPU was dying it would be dead they just die....How old is it and how had has it been used? Get diagnostic software from the hard drive manufacture and run it it will tell you whether the hard drive is bad or not but it sounds to me it is...

 

[Woodssi]

Thanks for the prompt response, Seth.

It's less than 6 months old, and has only been used for domestic purposes (the lady is not very technically minded) i.e. Keeping her photo's and music on, Skype & E-Mail etc etc

 

[seth500]

I know that Skype hasn't got a great reputation these days run a malware scan by Emsisoft on it the free emergency kit, you can put it on a usb like it say or run it from the computer but I bet you have some serious adware and other junk on there that giving you these issues.

Emsisoft Free Emergency Kit: portable malware scanner | Free removal of Viruses, Bots, Spyware, Keyloggers and Trojans

If you have a usb stick put this program on it and update the program from another computer and do a full scan on the infected on the malware found will be quarantined on the usb and not the computer..

I'm sorry I missed the i/o error event viewer could tell you about which kind, could have a faulty drive or cable.....

 

[cluberti]

It might be useful as well to run process monitor from sysinternals while running something that is slow, for instance. Usually browsing the filesystem is slow if a drive is dying when other things are slow - I'm not saying the drive may not be the cause, but it would be pretty rare for browsing the drive with Explorer to be normal and running things to be slow if that was the case. Check for odd activity that you may not expect using Process Explorer to see if there's an explanation for the "slowness".

 

[Woodssi]

Some good tips there, thanks.

Since I've done the clean installation, there are only the usual System Files and Security Essentials on the Drive.

I've attached a Process Monitor logfile, which I ran up until SecEss 'froze' whilst into a Full Scan.

 

[cluberti]

It looks like the registry is being queried over and over again for settings related to firewallsettings.exe (E2B3C97F-6AE1-41AC-817A-F6F92166D7DD), and it doesn't find anything at all about it (which is really, really odd). Did this machine happen to have a security suite that included a firewall, or a 3rd party firewall (like ZoneAlarm) installed at one point but has since been removed? I've only ever seen this when one of those two sorts of apps (which replace the Windows firewall with hooks to their own software) were installed and then removed, but the old Windows firewall settings were never "unhooked" properly in the registry.

If that hasn't happened, I would say that yes, this would probably be a hardware issue (there's no other possible explanation given the data I see here than one of the two above).

 

[Woodssi]

Did this machine happen to have a security suite that included a firewall, or a 3rd party firewall (like ZoneAlarm) installed at one point but has since been removed?

I believe that the machine comes pre-installed with a Norton package...

However, it also had McAfee & Spyware Doctor files on it when I first got hold of it. Possibly, due to the fact that someone recommended Spyware Doctor, the others were NOT uninstalled prior to installation.

I assumed, maybe incorrectly, that the clean install would have flushed these out.

Is there any way of 'repairing' the Registry in this regard, or is there anything else I can run through?

 

[cluberti]

The only repair I am aware of at this point is a clean install with clean media.