Laptop freezing

[Parkymo]

Hello,

 

I don't know whether this is malware related or not, but my Dell L501 XPS laptop keeps freezing. It has been doing it for some time now and is getting to the point that it has difficulty booting up at all. Quite often after a freeze and restart, it will run chkdsk before booting, do a lot of deleting files and recovering of orphaned files, and then attempt to reboot, often freezing before completing or shortly afterwards.

 

I had a SSD fitted about three months ago when I kept getting messages that my hard disk was in imminent danger of failure. I noticed it froze a few times before changing disk and thought this was a symptom of the hard disk's malady. The SSD was cloned from the HD. The freezing problem has got progressively worse.

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

 

[Firefox]

Hello and

Being that this was cloned from the failing drive to the new SSD drive, it is possible that you cloned over a corrupt operating system and hence your problems....

Also have your ran a diagnostics on the new drive? Being that this is a Dell computer you can do this by booting the computer and hitting the F12 key. You will be presented with a menu, choose either Hard Drive Diagnostics or just Diagnostics (depending on your BIOS version).

You can also post the logs below so we can gather further info.

Please run the tools below and ATTACH (do not copy and paste) the logs so someone can better assist you.

Please post an mbam-check log:

Create an mbam-check log:

• Download mbam-check.exe from here and save it to your desktop
• Double-click on mbam-check.exe to run it, it should then open a log file
• Please attach the CheckResults.txt file which should now be located on your desktop to your next reply

Next:

Please run the following scanner and send back the logs.

Download DDS from one of the locations below and save to your Desktop

dds.scr

dds.com

Temporarily disable any script blocker if your Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware has it.

How To Temporarily Disable Your Anti-virus, Firewall And Anti-malware Programs

Once downloaded you can disconnect from the Internet and disable your Ant-Virus temporarily if needed.

Then double click dds.scr or dds.com to run the tool

Click the Run button if prompted with an Open File - Security Warning dialog box.

A black DOS console should open and run for a moment.

• When done, DDS will open two (2) logs:
  • DDS.txt
  • Attach.txt

• Save both reports to your desktop
• Please include the following logs in your next reply: DDS.txt and Attach.txt

  You can ignore the note about zipping the Attach.txt file in most cases.

[Parkymo]

Hi Firefox,

 

Thanks for your prompt response.

 

I ran Diagnostics and it appeared to pass all tests without any problems. 

 

The mbam and dds reports are attached.

 

 

CheckResults.txt

dds.txt

attach.txt

[AdvancedSetup]

This could be hardware related as the drive appears to also be having issues properly saving data, or it could be due to an infection.

I would do a FULL Disk Check and see if that helps or not, if not then have someone look at it for a possible infection.

 

==== Event Viewer Messages From Past Week ========.29/07/2013 02:52:31, Error: Service Control Manager [7023]  - The Peer Name Resolution Protocol service terminated with the following error:  %%-214099353529/07/2013 02:52:31, Error: Service Control Manager [7001]  - The Peer Networking Grouping service depends on the Peer Name Resolution Protocol service which failed to start because of the following error:  %%-214099353529/07/2013 02:52:31, Error: Microsoft-Windows-PNRPSvc [102]  - The Peer Name Resolution Protocol cloud did not start because the creation of the default identity failed with error code: 0x80630801.28/07/2013 14:35:59, Error: Service Control Manager [7009]  - A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Windows Search service to connect.28/07/2013 14:35:59, Error: Service Control Manager [7000]  - The Windows Search service failed to start due to the following error:  The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.28/07/2013 14:35:43, Error: Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM [10005]  - DCOM got error "1053" attempting to start the service WSearch with arguments "" in order to run the server: {9E175B6D-F52A-11D8-B9A5-505054503030}28/07/2013 14:35:36, Error: Service Control Manager [7031]  - The Windows Search service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 30000 milliseconds: Restart the service.28/07/2013 14:35:36, Error: Service Control Manager [7024]  - The Windows Search service terminated with service-specific error %%-1073473535.28/07/2013 13:59:27, Error: NetBT [4311]  - Initialization failed because the driver device could not be created. Use the string "0026C79AD97B" to identify the interface for which initialization failed. It represents the MAC address of the failed interface or the  Globally Unique Interface Identifier (GUID) if NetBT was unable to  map from GUID to MAC address. If neither the MAC address nor the GUID were  available, the string represents a cluster device name. 28/07/2013 11:35:43, Error: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General [5]  - {Registry Hive Recovered} Registry hive (file): '\??\C:\Users\User\ntuser.dat' was corrupted and it has been recovered. Some data might have been lost..==== End Of File ===========================

I would suggest following the advice from the topic here Available Assistance for Possibly Infected Computers and having one of the Experts assist you with looking into your issue.

Thanks

[Firefox]

I would definitely have this computer checked as AdvancedSetup advised above...

Just to add also, I noticed you are running more than one Anti-virus software.... it is not a good idea to run more than one anti-virus program at one time, this could cause conflicts and do more harm than good.

Work with the experts as AdvancedSetup advised above and they will help you get it all sorted out.

[Parkymo]

I don't think it is the SSD, as the freezing issue predates its installation. Could it be related to any other hardware on the computer?

 

I downloaded and ran Malwarebytes Anti Malware short scan and it found four PUPs which I deleted, but the freezing continues.

 

What exactly is meant by a "FULL Disk Check". The laptop has run ChkDsk six or seven times today alone as it keeps freezing, many times even before it has a chance to boot up. It seems to work better after ChkDsk finds and deletes a lot of corrupted attribute files and index entries, restores many orphaned files and repairs attribute files, which it doesn't do every time it runs. The problem still remains.

 

As for the more than one Anti-virus software issue, I am running Microsoft Security Essentials and not running Avast, although it still seems to be in my system despite my best efforts to remove it. Any ideas on that?

[AdvancedSetup]

Please follow the directions below as we are unable to run scans and other programs needed to check on your computer in this forum.  They can do that in the other forum.

 

I would suggest following the advice from the topic here Available Assistance for Possibly Infected Computers and having one of the Experts assist you with looking into your issue.


Thank you again