Windows startup hanging 20% of time - on loading secdrv.sys?

[pjglewis]

As per the thread title I am experiencing regular issues on startup of windows 7. About 20% of the time startup will 'hang' just after my 'desktop' appears, but just before the little speaker icon and network icons appear in the bottom right hand corner.

I have tried using selective startup to reduce possibly conflicting software and have turned on the bootlog function.

The selective startup changes have had no impact, and the boot up log suggests that my system hangs when trying to load secdrv.sys - that is to say that on the occasions that it boots up ok secdrv.sys is the next driver to appear in the bootup list.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Boozad]

secdrv.sys is Macrovision SECURITY Driver. It's a part of earlier Windows versions (XP I think) but can be introduced to the system via a wide number of games apparently, it shouldn't be there natively. Do you have any games installed? There's a possibility it could be some form of Malware.

Install and run MalwareBytes.

   Note

Make sure you uncheck the 'Enable Free Trial' box when installing.

 

[pjglewis]

Macrovision security driver

Thanks for the reply. Yes I do have some games by EA (one of the culprits for installing the driver in the first place as I understand it), and have tried un-installing them. The driver is however still there!.

I also tried installing/running MalwareBytes as you suggested, and it seemed to work ok - finding a couple of issues - but doing nothing to secdrv.sys.

I am still having the occasional 'lock-up' as before. It is more annoying than being a serious problem as all I need to do is reboot a couple of times and all will be well again for a few days.

I am trying to avoid reinstalling windows, but at the end of the day I may get so annoyed with it that I will finally 'bite the bullet'!

Any other suggestions gratefully received.

 

[Boozad]

Do you have any games left installed at all? The chances are that's how it got there. You could stop the process in the Services tab in Task Manager but it would probably have to be a manual process every time you boot up. The reason it's causing issues is because it allows the programs it's associated with access to the kernel, I'm pretty surprised it hasn't caused any BSODs to be honest.

Download Process Explorer, install and run and find out which process it belongs to.


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