[mmcg]

Hello. My computer (Windows Vista- PC, running Norton Anti-virus) was fine last night, and upon starting it up today it is extremely slow and constantly freezing. Can not run anything without it freezing. (Am using another computer to write this post.)

Attempted to scan with Malwarebytes. Quick scan revealed no infected files, but computer froze when attempted full scan of system. Have started in safe mode and seems to work fine. Ran Chkdsk/f utility on restart and did not help. I'm lost as to how to figure out what the problem is here. Would appreciate any help. Thanks!

[Macboatmaster]

mmcg
Welcome to Tech Support Guy

The first most relevant question is of course, what were you doing last night, by that I mean have you installed new software, did you download updates.

Instead of chkdsk /f - run chkdsk /r and follow that with a system file check
sfc /scannow

[mmcg]

Did nothing unusual on the computer last night, only typical internet browsing, etc. No downloads, new programs, updates, etc. Shut computer down and upon startup this morning it was slow and freezing as described. Ran chkdsk/r which resulted in a blue screen error and subsequent restart. tried again on startup and received "access denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode"

[Megabite]

Try Start>>All Programs>>Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and choose run as Admin

In the Command Prompt type chkdsk /r click Enter Note there is a space between chkdsk and /r

You will be asked if you want a check disk to run on next startup click Y and then press Enter

Restart your PC


Also have you backed Important Data up already!

[Macboatmaster]

Megabite
Thank you for stepping in - peeping from the side


mmcg
1.Would you please confirm that you do have sufficient HDD space as unused capacity. It should be an absolute minimum of 10%.

2. Would you also confirm please that your home page is still as usual and when you open your browser, if you can get that far it has not been reset to some page you do not recognise

3. Do you have details of the blue screen please ie the error message

4. Check please that you can get to system restore and that restore points are available
DO NOT please actually attempt restore at this stage.

5. As my colleague has said it is advisable to ensure you have back up, although attempting a full backup system image may well not be possible now.

6. Clean boot it please and see where we go from there.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

Read that carefully please to ensure you do not delete restore points

[Megabite]

Macboatmaster

Not stepping in just peeping in from the side..

[mmcg]

Running chkdsk /r seems to have fixed the problem. Said something about fixing a norton file. Your help is much appreciated!

[Macboatmaster]

The chkdsk may have fixed the symptom of the problem rather than the problem.

If the problem was file corruption then it may indeed now be OK. This can be caused by shutting down when Norton is updating or indeed anything updating, that is why Windows update always warn you - do not shut down your computer, it will do so automatically etc.

If however the problem was bad sectors on the HDD, which would be found by the chkdsk /r but not by the chkdsk /f, then the porblem has not been solved, only the symptom of the problem has been fixed.

When chkdsk /r discovers a bad sector on the HDD, it attempts to recover the data and rewrite it to a good sector. It then marks the sector as bad so that data is not written to it in future.

It does NOT contrary to popular belief repair the bad sector. Once a sector is bad it cannot be repaired. A disc with bad sectors may last for sometime, as a sector is only 512 bytes. Therefore a mere fraction of a 250Gb hard drive for example. As there are of course a 1000 bytes in a kilobyte, a 1000 kilobytes in a megabyte and a 1000 megabytes in a gigabyte.

My strong recommendation is to obtain the results of the chkdsk

On windows vista this is control panel event viewer, windows logs on left pane, application and then you may click source heading and that will sort them for you and you are looking for the wininit entries. Alternatively when the application events have loaded youmay click the find and type chkdsk

Here is how and then you are checking to see if bad sectors were discovered.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...iewer-log.html
If they were it is time to start considering a new hard drive


Also my strong recommendation is to replace Norton, which is known for causing slow performance and many other problems.

If you wish to consider this post back and I will guide you further.