glivo1

Thank you. Here are requested logs. Addition.txt FRST.txt MB-CheckResult.txt

While the 3rd party defrag program had a more significant impact, in as much as it actually did something and put files back into more contiguous blocks, it made absolutely no difference to performance. It did put the worst affected file back into about 100 fragments instead of over 800 but it didn't fix anything. I've then tried to use System Restore twice to earlier points when I knew there was better performance and both times failed yet again. The first one was actually suggested by Windows and the second was from 8 days ago when I manually made one. After taking nearly an hour both times upon reboot, I get a message telling me that "System Restore was unsuccessful and my files weren't changed. Try a different Restore point". I have never been able to successfully use System Restore to achieve anything and I'm starting to doubt it actually works at all. 10 Restore Points to choose from but they don't work. Even though I have done a lot of re-building over the last week I was nearly prepared to use my Acronis boot disk and a backup I did 9 days ago when the system was running smoothly. It would have meant a big step backwards. Before doing this I figured I could just start taking the little "Service" programs off one at a time rather than just going back a full 9 days in one hit. It would seem that each little program that installations want to add in, slowly but surely bog the system down to a crawl. Everything these days wants to monitor it's part of the system, keep checking that it's updated and provide little messages to you to ensure you know it's there and wanting money to upgrade to Pro versions. I think one of the big offenders was the printer services kindly provided by Epson so I can print to my $30 inkjet printer from anywhere in the world. These non-malware / legitimate programs appear to have had pretty much the same impact as full on malware; ie, kill the system. Hopefully I'm now fixed.

It will be interesting to see if 3rd party defraging fixes my performance issues with Windows 10 installation that is less than 2 weeks old. These are reporting 50% plus fragmentation and system files in over 800 fragments where Windows defrag is saying 2%. The worst affected files are WINDOWS Defender and System Restore files. There is less than 100 GB on the disk and Defraggler is telling me it will take over a day to fix it. If this is what to expect from Windows 10 on a brand new HDD, I'm not too impressed. There is still the unexplained reappearance of files from a removed system. I'm not sure there isn't something going on here.

Thanks Ron, This computer has something going on. I think the "ghost" files are gone (maybe) but it is performing really badly, most noticeably in browsers again. Edge is almost unusable and Chrome not much better. Outlook takes forever to send / receive and the resources are again topping out. If kevinf80 picks this up again (or whoever), I have attached the file I sent to AdvancedSetup (aka Ron). Greg MBAM file.docx

Talking to you from Windows 10. 2 new HDDs and all 3 old ones out.

Don't worry about it. Who was to know that would happen? I was considering a change to Avast instead of AVG before you suggested anything. Avast is used safely all around the world and now apparently owns AVG. Whether it was a compatibility issue with both running, or being installed on a fragile system, or even something else is to remain unknown. If you recall, the original problem was very stubborn. These things happen and it certainly isn't my first time. Can I ask you if, before we had it "fixed" just before Avast, it did actually have a Malware issue? If so was it identified or was there just non-specific corruption? I'm happy for you to close this case out. For all intents and purposes, the system we've been working on is dead. In a few hours it will cease to exist and Windows 10 will be on a new HDD. All system backups will be deleted (other than users and data files) and disks will be zeroed before reuse.

I wrote at the bottom of my last post , "I am about to give up on this machine", and then I deleted it. I think you are correct. We sort of left the arena of Malware a couple of days ago and crossed over into system corruption I think. Nevertheless, I thank you and admire your depth of knowledge. We gave it a good shot. It's now looking very much like the cheese and kisses (Mrs) will have to learn to plod her way around Windows 10. I wish I had a hearing aid so I could turn it off. I hate giving up but I feel we have both wasted enough time here. I already have a Windows 10 disk from an ISO file download last month and I believe it is as easy as simply putting a valid W7, 8 or 8.1 activation key in. MS recognizes it and transfers the licence to Windows 10. Apparently this happens on ISO disks created after October or November 2016. I read about it somewhere last night. I'll shut her down and put the new HDD in and go with a clean install. I'll have to manually move all of the necessary data files I copied last night but it is a good excuse to do a big purge of unwanted crap.

Computer running like a dog again now. IE 11 Offline installer is the same file as the online one. Plus it wants to download and then install required updates. Even though I close all aspects of AVG down the installer still tells me that it has to close programs (2 AVG, Dropbox and Windows Explorer). Then restarts them, then fails to complete installation. MSconfig.exe will not allow me to remove AVG from any of the tabs. As soon as I click Apply it puts the check back in the box. Should I uninstall it completely.

While the Security Center problem, and the unknown SSR Feeds error messages in WLM have gone, Internet Explorer remains a problem. I now have Version 8 (as to be expected) but am unable to upgrade to any later version. I was running 11. IE is still blocked by my banking site and I am unable to submit replies to this forum or log my account off. This post is made using Chrome, which appears to be working properly and allows me access to my banking. I don't know but I'm not sure this is at all being caused by Malware, albeit that my initial problem probably or possibly was. I think this system has just somehow become corrupted to the point of near death.

The reinstall over the existing Windows appears to be OK. So far as I can see most things remain. I have to run some updates and upgrade IE but all seems fine so far. Do we just run with it or are you interested in looking at any logs? I also need to run the windows disk clean up to get rid of junk created in the reinstall. There is probably junk around from our efforts to recover the system as well. Ive bought a new WD Blue 1 TB HDD, so in a while I'll put it in the box and probably do a dual boot install of W10 / 7. Or maybe I'll just tell the boss we couldn't save it and she'll have to suck it up and learn to use 10. Let me know if there is anything you want me to do. At the moment I can read the forum on the affected computer, but I can't submit replies. This is from my tablet.

I'm about to give this a go. But why? I was doing some reading last night about "why so many people still use Windows 7". The main reason for me is that my wife doesn't like technology change and hates needing to learn a new environment. She only recently got rid of her iPhone 4 because she lost it. Secondly, believe it or not, her work still uses it, or at least NT or similar. The interface is the same and so she likes the familiarity here at home. This is pretty poor as she is a government school teacher. We were running an NT network 15 years ago when I was teaching IT. This delay on our home computer has slowed me right down and when I have to help my kids on their laptops and my sons gaming box, I'm really quite fumbly. So this morning I'm off to the Saturday monthly computer fair to buy some bits and pieces. I will go ahead with his procedure just for the experience but I intend on buying at least another HDD and putting W10 on. I may even do a dual boot so she can still have W7 if she really wants. Anyway, it's all ready to go, so I'll let you know what happens. I won't be trying Avast again any time real soon but I guess it was just a one off thing.

It must have been when I was trying to do System Restore. It was trying to put stuff back but couldn't find everything. That's probably why it failed.

Yep. How is this happening? There is more weird stuff going on. I've just plugged my external drive in to begin making copies of stuff. A whole heap of directories and files that had been moved to different locations or deleted last week, have shown back up in my downloads directory. Half of it is date stamped 11.00 AM this morning and the other half is date stamped from 1.19 to 1.20 PM on 16/11/2016. These date stamps are obviously not correct. Earlier today these directories and files weren't in this spot. I spent hours last week checking files, deleting what I didn't want and moving what I wanted to keep. I had emptied the recycle bin and defrag. I've just looked again and it is only directory structure that has come back. No files. Is it possible that something we did this morning (last night your time) put all this stuff back?

Sure. I'll get started. The weather forecast is for it to reach up to 50'C in some parts of the country over the next couple of days and again up to 40'C where I am. Good excuse to stay indoors.

You sound really flush with confidence in this procedure. I'm thinking you haven't done it before maybe. Well, short of pulling everything off, what have we got to lose? There isn't a whole lot of stuff on here and I can easily copy the Users directory to another disk. The main thing I don't want to lose again is all of our emails. This computer was only rebuilt onto this HDD not long ago after my 1TB WD Green died of Bad Sectors (just out of warranty period). I managed to get all / most documents off but the disk was losing stuff pretty rapidly in the end and we lost all old emails and a lot of our Internet settings / favourites etc. I can do a straight copy of documents, music, video and photos. Can you suggest the best way to do this? Otherwise I'll just take some time to copy everything over to an external HDD. At least the HDD isn't dying on me this time. I have the disks for Windows and Office. I have the drivers for the board and other devices so I guess it's worth a shot.

And now it's back to telling me the service is off.

I wish I knew WTF is going on. I just looked down to the Task Tray (bottom right) and where the Flag icon for "Action Centre" has previously been red marked telling me the Security Centre Service is Off, it is now no longer red marked. It now says "No current issues detected". However, services.msc is still telling me that the Security Centre service is not running and the "Startup type" is now set to "Automatic (delayed)". I think it was just "Automatic" before. I didn't do or change anything. The little red warning symbol just disappeared. There are websites I can go to in Chrome that IE 11 wont reach and I'm still getting the RSS feeds error message in Windows Live Mail. Other than these rather peculiar anomalies, the system is actually running well.

CBS.zip

Yes. Already done. Here they are. Addition.txt FRST.txt

No good. I'll go back to your previous post and do that.

Tried System Restore again and it said possible reason for failure is Antiviral software. I've turned all components of AVG off and attempting again. I look forward to a machine that is back where we started from. Broken but fixable. Here's hoping.

Ok, looks bad. Due to backing up on only 250 GB Disks, I had set backup to only store most recent disk image. 115 GB on my C: drive was making backups of over 218 GB including the system image and second backup would not fit so I changed to only keep latest system image. I have 2 of these disks so I was alternating them to keep last 2 backups but, I deleted the one from 29/01/2017 as I assumed it was bad. It gets worse because for some reason System Restore from the 30/01/2017 failed and no changes were made. All earlier system images are gone. Do you have any other ideas or am I looking at backing up documents and settings for users and formatting to reinstall Windows. I would have thought that the Avast installation would have created a Restore Point but it didn't. This is a real PITA since your help prior to that appeared to have cleaned the system.

Yes, I worked that out yesterday to see when you would be asleep or not. Don't worry too much about it. Just frustrating. I think even the backup done on the 30th was just before I made the initial post but the problem had been evident the day before. So maybe going back to 24 or 28 will be before there was a problem.. fingers crossed. I'll see what happens and post for you to review tomorrow. Sleep well.

Sorry and 28/01/2017

I ticked Show more restore points, I have 30/01/2017, 24/01/2017 and 21/01/2017.