I'm writing this from another laptop as my own is running so ridiculously slowly it would take me about 3 weeks to convey my issues.
I have a 1 year old Dell Laptop, with Windows 7. The other day I turned it on and ran stupidly slowly and then said "Start Windows Backup" and it would not do this. Then said "contact manufacturer to repair/replace harddrive."
Eventually it booted and since then it takes about 20 mins to boot and even loading internet explorer takes about 3 minutes to load.
Also, the task bar is white/looks like it's safe mode (though I am not running it in safe mode right now)
Surely this is a malware/virus problem. I guess I will have to download whatever programs you guys suggest on THIS laptop, and then somehow transfer (with USB flash drive) them onto my screwed up computer.
Through this method I managed to put Microsoft Security Essentials on and it detected one item - Adware:Win32/OpenCandy - This is supposedly only a program which delivers unwanted advertisements. I removed it of course, but it didn't help much.
Trying to do a virus scan with MS Essentials is comically slow too.
If there is any other information that you need, I will happily describe whatever I can.
Any help will be much appreciated
Regards
Nick