[Angelboi]

Hi All,

Geekstogo has always had the solutions to my issues.
This is one that I cannot solve on my own, nor have I ever heard of this problem.

Story leading up to the problem:
I had leant my laptop to a friend to use while he was staying at my place, however he had a problem of ALWAYS leaving it on, round the clock. Often times he would fall asleep in the middle of the night and leave it running (including the room light and TV). Few months later when he moved out, I noticed that my laptop is having a VERY hard time booting.

Explanation of issue:
At first, when I try to boot my laptop, it would hang on the splash screen for 5 minutes or so, then login to a temporary profile telling me that the computer could not access the User Logins. As of recently, I have not had this issue, not sure how it fixed itself, but the problem I have now is that whenever I boot, it takes a ridiculously long time (And I've already tried to disable BIOS start ups and Window start ups), then when it finally boots into the desktop, it hangs. Everything LAGS. I open firefox, it goes not responding/crashes/freezes. I open a folder, explorer.exe goes not responding/crashes.
Everything just comes to an absolute snail crawl. The only temporary solution I have found to this is to let it finishing booting completely (Another 10 minutes?) whereas the desktop is stable, then use Task Manager to force quit explorer.exe and restart explorer.exe.
I have found with this refresh of the explorer, everything resumes at normal speed.

Things I have tried:
Using CCleaner to clean out my registry and files, using Spybot to check for Malware, removing unnecessary startup programs via msconfig, and simply deleting old unused programs to clear up HDD space.

Some other notes, sometimes the computer will not boot at all, it will simply restart, sometimes once inside the desktop it will tell me that the HDD has errored, some RAD_KERNEL error comes up (only seen this once).

I can understand if this means my HDD is dying and i need to swap it (which I dont want to do as I don't have the product key for my windows), but what doesnt make sense to me is why does force ending explorer.exe and starting it up again make everything A-Okay?

Geeks! I need you! Please share your thoughts.

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We may need to move you over to the malware forum but let's try the following:


1. Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check. C:
2. Click Properties, and then click Tools.
3. Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed,
4. Check both boxes and then click Start.
You will receive the following message:
The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?
Click Yes to schedule the disk check, but don't restart yet.

Right click on (My) Computer and select Manage (Continue) Then click on the arrow in front of Event Viewer. Next Click on the arrow in front of Windows Logs Right click on System and Clear Log, Clear. Repeat for Application.
Reboot. The disk check will run and will probably take an hour or more to finish.


Start, All Programs, Accessories then right click on Command Prompt and Run as Administrator. Then type (with an Enter after each line).

sfc /scannow

(SPACE after sfc. This will check your critical system files. If it asks for a CD and you don't have one or it doesn't like your CD just tell it to SKIP.)


1. Please download the Event Viewer Tool by Vino Rosso
http://images.malwar...om/vino/VEW.exe
and save it to your Desktop:
2. Right-click VEW.exe and Run AS Administrator
3. Under 'Select log to query', select:

* System
4. Under 'Select type to list', select:
* Error
* Warning


Then use the 'Number of events' as follows:


1. Click the radio button for 'Number of events'
Type 20 in the 1 to 20 box
Then click the Run button.
Notepad will open with the output log.


Please post the Output log in your next reply then repeat but select Application.



Download ShellExView.

http://www.nirsoft.n...s/shexview.html

Use this download:
http://www.nirsoft.n...xview_setup.exe

Once you get it installed, run it and look in the third or fourth column from the RIGHT. It should say MICROSOFT. Click once or twice on MICROSOFT so that items with NO are at the top.
Select all of the NO items and then click on the red led looking icon in the upper left. This should disable all of the non-microsoft additions to Explorer. Reboot




Get Process Explorer

http://live.sysinter...com/procexp.exe
Save it to your desktop then run it (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator).

View, Select Column, check Verified Signer, OK
Options, Verify Image Signatures


Click twice on the CPU column header to sort things by CPU usage with the big hitters at the top.

Wait a minute then:

File, Save As, Save. Open the file Procexp.txt on your desktop and copy and paste the text to a reply.

Get the free version of Speccy:

http://www.filehippo...download_speccy (Look in the upper right for the Download
Latest Version button) Download, Save and Install it (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator). Run Speccy (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator). When it finishes (the little icon in the bottom left will stop moving), File, Save as Text File, (to your desktop) note the name it gives. OK. Open the file in notepad and delete the line that gives the serial number of your Operating System. (It will be near the top about 10 lines down.) Attach the file to your next post.






Ron

[RKinner]

We may need to move you over to the malware forum but let's try the following:


1. Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check. C:
2. Click Properties, and then click Tools.
3. Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed,
4. Check both boxes and then click Start.
You will receive the following message:
The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?
Click Yes to schedule the disk check, but don't restart yet.

Right click on (My) Computer and select Manage (Continue) Then click on the arrow in front of Event Viewer. Next Click on the arrow in front of Windows Logs Right click on System and Clear Log, Clear. Repeat for Application.
Reboot. The disk check will run and will probably take an hour or more to finish.


Start, All Programs, Accessories then right click on Command Prompt and Run as Administrator. Then type (with an Enter after each line).

sfc /scannow

(SPACE after sfc. This will check your critical system files. If it asks for a CD and you don't have one or it doesn't like your CD just tell it to SKIP.)


1. Please download the Event Viewer Tool by Vino Rosso
http://images.malwar...om/vino/VEW.exe
and save it to your Desktop:
2. Right-click VEW.exe and Run AS Administrator
3. Under 'Select log to query', select:

* System
4. Under 'Select type to list', select:
* Error
* Warning


Then use the 'Number of events' as follows:


1. Click the radio button for 'Number of events'
Type 20 in the 1 to 20 box
Then click the Run button.
Notepad will open with the output log.


Please post the Output log in your next reply then repeat but select Application.



Download ShellExView.

http://www.nirsoft.n...s/shexview.html

Use this download:
http://www.nirsoft.n...xview_setup.exe

Once you get it installed, run it and look in the third or fourth column from the RIGHT. It should say MICROSOFT. Click once or twice on MICROSOFT so that items with NO are at the top.
Select all of the NO items and then click on the red led looking icon in the upper left. This should disable all of the non-microsoft additions to Explorer. Reboot




Get Process Explorer

http://live.sysinter...com/procexp.exe
Save it to your desktop then run it (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator).

View, Select Column, check Verified Signer, OK
Options, Verify Image Signatures


Click twice on the CPU column header to sort things by CPU usage with the big hitters at the top.

Wait a minute then:

File, Save As, Save. Open the file Procexp.txt on your desktop and copy and paste the text to a reply.

Get the free version of Speccy:

http://www.filehippo...download_speccy (Look in the upper right for the Download
Latest Version button) Download, Save and Install it (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator). Run Speccy (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run As Administrator). When it finishes (the little icon in the bottom left will stop moving), File, Save as Text File, (to your desktop) note the name it gives. OK. Open the file in notepad and delete the line that gives the serial number of your Operating System. (It will be near the top about 10 lines down.) Attach the file to your next post.






Ron

[Angelboi]

Thanks for the reply!
That's quite the extensive list, I will get back to you as soon as I can.

[Angelboi]

So the Disk Check has completely locked up my computer...

[RKinner]

What exactly do you mean by " locked up my computer." When you reboot does it start and then hang? How far does the Drive Check get?

Is this Win 7? 32 or 64 bit?

Can you boot into Safe Mode?


(Reboot and when you see the maker's logo, hear a beep or it talks about F8, start tapping the F8 key slowly. Keep tapping until the Safe Mode Menu appears and choose Safe Mode with Networking or perhaps Last Known Good or Repair Your Computer? Login with your usual login.)

IF you can't boot into Safe Mode can you boot into BIOS/CMOS Setup (Should tell you which key to hit when you see the maker's logo. There should be a section in the setup about the hard drive where it gives it part number and says how big it is.

Can you burn a CD on another computer or do you have a USB drive we can use?

[Angelboi]

Win7.
Can i ask a curious question?
Is it AT ALL possible that having the battery and charger plugged together allows the laptop to perform better?

Cause I typically leave the battery out, and of course I always have this lag issue.

I have recently chosen to restore the laptop to factory defaults, and it seems to boot fine if the battery and charger are simultaneously active...

thoughts?

[RKinner]

It's possible. If your power supply were very noisy (poorly designed or bad capacitor or diode) then having the battery in would filter the power a bit and smooth it out.

Some HP laptops will run slower if the center pin on the connector breaks or shorts out but there will be no indication.

Were you able to get it to boot?

[Angelboi]

I restored factory defaults.

Here's something interesting.

After formatting, with battery in it ran smoothly.
Today I tried to turn it on to do a full windows update installation, and its lagging like mad, with the battery out. I will to some more testing.