Fabb

Dear admin, In the last few days I did not use the computer as much. However, I have to say that the overheating problems seem to be reduced after the latest windows updates. Since the laptop seems to be working fine right now, I do not want to waste your time with my reports. Anyway, thank you for your help. Best regards Fabb

Thank you for your replay. Sorry for my delay, I will perform the steps you kindly suggested and report as soon as I can.

Hello Everyone, here I am again after just one year. Since may, when I had my last malware related issue, I installed Malwarebytes and got a premium subscription. The software found some malwares now and then, and blocked some suspicious sites sometimes, but I was mostly fine. Until now. At the moment, a threat scan from Malwarebytes detects no issues. However, the laptop is dramatically overheating, even when not plugged-in, and the battery is drained fairly quickly. Can you help me somehow? Thank you Fabb

Hello Maurice, thank you for your reply. I followed steps 1-4 and my Malwarebytes is indeed with version 1.0.990. I did not understand the purpose of step 5: why should I stop ransomware protection? Anyway I confim to you that with component version 1.0.990 the problem seems now solved. (It was still a problem with version 1.0.988, I checked three days ago but then I forgot to reply). Thank you

Hi Maurice, thank you for your answer. Here is the report: mbst-grab-results.zip

Good afternoon, I recently (on June 25th) updated my laptop to windows 10, build 2004. It was my second attempt to perform the update using the built-in Windows Update utility, after the first attempt had failed some days before. Right after the update everything looked normal, except the two malware that Malwarebytes Premium found and quarantined on its daily scan on June 27th (one is a registry key and the other is a file). Anyway I ignored it, as Malwarebytes just did its job and I thought everything would be fine now. However, I didn't use the laptop very often lately, until last week, when I started noticing this issue. I can use the laptop normally when I turn it on (except maybe the fans are louder than usual, but I figure this could be related to the fact that it's summer here, so it's warm), but if I just close the lid and it goes to sleep, then when I wake it up it doesn't work fine and I have to reboot it. Almost any open software crashes (this happens for Office, Google Chrome and Firefox), and I cannot run other softwares by clicking on them from the start menu or the application tray. However, they work if I use shortcuts. For instance, I cannot open file explorer by clicking on the folder icon, but I can do it by using the WIN+E combination. Anyway, when this happens I usually have to reboot the laptop, as I said, and the rebooting sometimes takes quite long. For instance, if I had clicked on many programs to try and open them after waking my laptop, it's as if they are starting to run and are left forever in the initialization status. So, if then I try to reboot, shutting off the laptop will take a while, because it will be as if there are many running programs, that the laptop is trying to kill before shutting down. Finally, I thought that this could be a driver-related issue, so I tried to update everything, both using Windows Update and Dell Update utilities. Some attempts were not successful at first, but I finally managed to install all updates available, though the problem is still there. Could it be an issue related to the malware Malwarebytes found on June 27th? Thank you Fabb

Hello, Everything seems to work fine now, so I don't need anything else. Thank you again for your assistance.

After a few tentatives, I managed to "restore" optane app from the "programs and features" tab of the control panel, so I don't need to uninstall it, nor do I need to run the Fixlist anymore

Hello, The old Fixlist.txt file actually disappeared right after I performed the fix, is this weird? I used the FRST tool I had named "gazork.exe" for the first fix, and I am going to do the same for this next one

This happens even if I want to simply copy-paste a file, or zip a folder, and as I right click to perform the operation, the notification shows up. Another instance is that I would right click to see recently viewed items, and open one of them. Anyway, I tried rebooting several times, as well as manually updating the drivers, but none of this worked. The suggestion I found online was to simply uninstall Optane.

Done, it was fast. Here you go: FRST.txt Addition.txt

Final update: The OS update worked! My understanding is that the malware that infected my laptop had disabled windows defender and windows update; removing the infected files with malwarebytes has stopped the infection from spreading, and finally the fixlist you made for me has allowed them to work again, is this correct? If it is so, then again I thank you very much for your help! Now I am not experiencing issues with the laptop, except this message "Intel® Optane™ Memory Pinning Error: Unable to load DLL ‘iaStorAfsServiceApi.dll" popping up every time I right click on a folder. However from a google search I understand it is a problem related to DELL and the latest windows update, so should be unrelated to malware. What should I do next? remove all the restoration softwares I used so far?

Let me add some more details to the previous post. For my first update tentative, i downloaded the version 1909 update from Microsoft website: https://www.microsoft.com/it-it/software-download/windows10 From that executable file, the "windows update assistant" was installed and performed the operation, without success. However, I just noticed that the windows 10 app "Windows Update" (a section of "Updates and security") is now working again, while it was not working for the past month or so, not giving me any notification and not finding updates even if I ran it manually. Anyway, I run it today and it found some "cumulative" updates, I installed a first one, rebooted, and then a second one. Scanned again for updates and it finally found the "Windows 10, version 1909 " update, and it is currently trying to install it (fingers crossed). Meanwhile, I also opened the Microsoft Store app (which I never do, it was totally random), and noticed 26 pending updates that had stopped all at the same level, something like 98% through. So I just restored them all manually and the Microsoft Store app was able to complete them, fortunately. The OS update is now at 14%, I'll let you know if it is successfull

Hi, I tried updating Windows 10 to the 1909 build. The first time I tried, the update failed and it told me that my antivirus was somehow interfering. So I rebooted the laptop and tried again, this time it worked, it took about 2 hours and, during one of the many automatic rebooting, it was stuck for a long time on 86%. However, now it finished and I turned on my laptop to check. Nothing changed and windows security is still not working (as usual, right after turning on the computer, the windows security icon briefly flashes in the bottom right of the screen, it is shown with a yellow mark indicating something wrong, it remains visible for a fraction of a second and then disappears). To check if the update was successful, I typed: WIN + R; "winver" The dialog box that pops-up shows that the installed version is still 1809, indicating that the update was not successful, although I did not receive any notification stating this. Any possible reason for this? Is it possible that Malwarebytes really interfered somehow? (I have a premium license now)

Here's the Malwarebytes setting you mentioned, as you see it is set to the left: This is the issue that I have been mentioning, what I see if I open "security at a glance": absolutely nothing The only thing I can click successfully is the gear Icon to the bottom left, and if navigate to the "antivirus provider" tab, this is what I see, an I can take no actions My idea was to update windows to 1909 as you suggested as well. For this, I was thinking to empty the quarantine folder of malwarebytes, because I don't know what would happen to those files if I update windows. But I was concerned that deleting those files was not a good idea, so that's how I came on this forum originally. As you already told me, I may delete those files and it should pose no harm to the laptop now, so I would proceed doing so and then updating my operating system. Unless you have a different suggestion.