Cheef

Oh, and again: thank you! 🙂

Ran the program just now and will implement your recommended changes later today when I get the chance. Everything seems good now and is working properly. I really appreciate all the help you've given me. You've saved me lots of frustration and probably $1,000 that I don't have. Have a great rest of your week.

I rebooted after running FRST and my GPU has been fine since. Normal temps (~48C idle), normal GPU utilization (0-1%), etc. Fixlog.txt cureit.log

Here you go: FRST.txtAddition.txt GPU still looking steady, which is the first time that's happened on a single reboot since this all started about 2 weeks ago.

Hello, thanks for the quick response (again). I had to copy the downloaded file then run it as admin just to get it to actually run. Here is the .log you need. I also note now that the Malwarebytes shortcut is now appearing properly on my desktop unlike before (see OP): AV_block_remove_2024.04.29-16.40.log Seems the GPU is working fine for now -- no overheating or weird usage % yet.

Kicking myself that it took me this long to realize. Thank you very much for your help. Hope my situation is fixable. Have a great rest of your day & week.

Hi, thanks for the super quick response. I rebooted my computer after turning off fast restart. The GPU temp/usage is back to spiking and behaving weirdly; here are two screenshots of MSI Afterburner so you know what I'm talking about. The temperature/usage will temporarily fall back down to normal levels if I "click off" the browser, but it still sometimes spikes when a browser window is not on top. Not sure if this helps at all, but I figure context could be useful. Here are the logs. It took about 20 minutes to get; not sure if that's normal or just a symptom of my computer acting up. mbst-grab-results.zip

This is sort of a doozy so you may have to bear with me here. I appreciate any and all help. Please excuse the wall of text; I think all of this context is important. My current PC is 6 years old (purchased March 2018). In May 2020 I bought new RAM and replaced my GPU (now a 980ti given by a family member; so it's old, but in great condition & still works fine). So it's *possible* my problems are hardware related, but I'm now very convinced it's some sort of malware. About 2 weeks ago I realized late one evening that my PC was lagging pretty noticeably. I opened up MSI Afterburner and found my GPU was suddenly running at 70 degrees C (and climbing pretty rapidly) with 80%+ (spiking to nearly 100%) GPU utilization. Problem is... I was just looking at Google Chrome. I shut down my computer and figured it wouldn't happen the next day, but I was wrong. My PC was fine, then after approximately 10 hours, my GPU started heating up again, same issue. I installed Firefox and it happened on Firefox also. I updated my GPU drivers and nothing changed. A few days later, I reverted the recent Windows update (as this started shortly after the recent mid-April Windows update); no dice. My last resort was updating my board BIOS, which also didn't fix the problem. Over the last 2 weeks, the problem has also gotten worse. Soon the GPU was acting weird almost from the moment I booted the computer; usually I have to reboot/restart the computer for literally ~2 hours just to get to a state where the GPU doesn't act weirdly, but again this only lasts for about ~10 hours. (Today I am lucky; I only had to reboot a few times.) I also noticed that if I have Task Manager open, the problem completely disappears, though TM will then suddenly and weirdly close itself after just a few minutes, thus making the problem re-emerge. After doing it several times in a row, TM will close out almost instantly upon opening, instead of lasting just a few minutes. For a while I assumed my card was just showing very early signs of failure, as it's around 8 years old, but I've treated it very well. Naturally, with the discovery of Task Manager weirdly closing, I grew concerned it may be some sort of malware I've unintentionally downloaded or installed at some point in the last 2-3 weeks. (I don't know how I could have gotten this.) I'm a bit strapped for money, to put it mildly, and I'm rather desperate (I'm not in a monetary/time position to replace my computer), so I tried installing Malwarebytes to run a scan for malware and see if that was what was causing the GPU usage/temp spikes. I tried installing it. Numerous times while trying to open the install file, I was prompted with the following window: Running as administrator didn't help. I had to re-download the install file several times before getting it to work. During the pre-install prompts I was repeatedly shown a "Are you sure you want to close the install?" type window, which was weird because I obviously wasn't trying to close it. It seemingly installed normally, but at the end the window would close out before I could hit the "finish install" or "close window" button. The "Malwarebytes" shortcut was then on my desktop, but the image was the generic and not the MBAM logo: When I try running it, even as Administrator, I am given this prompt: I downloaded and ran the Support Tool, which funnily enough downloaded and runs fine. I select the option to Repair and then "Malwarebytes won't open;" it works for about 15 minutes, then says that Malwarebytes is "repaired" and should "work properly." The shortcut is removed, and Malwarebytes is nowhere to be seen on my computer. I try reinstalling it, but the same thing happens gain and again. I've gone through this whole process ("Installing" and "Repairing") probably 10 times by this point. I'm at my wit's end and, like I said, I'm pretty sure this is some sort of malware messing with my computer. Again, I'd really appreciate any and all help to try and solve this (if that's even possible), and I apologize again for the wall of text.