Slow Computer when opening programs for the first time

[sdrominger]

Hello!

My PC is nearly 5 years old and until a few months ago, I have never had a single complaint about it. Over the last few months, my computer has progressively run slower. It is particularly slow when booting up a program. It's to the point now where it takes almost a minute for it to load any new program. I tried restoring my computer (both to a set date and to the original manufacturing point, but to no avail) and installing numerous anti-virus/anti-malware programs. Malware Bytes was one of these and it has proven to be one of the most effective. It found and (seemingly) removed the Vundo virus...although whenever I run the scanner again from time to time, it somehow occasionally finds Vundo remnants. After my computer slowly slipped back into being extremely slow again, I decided I wanted to backup my hard drive, crash my computer, and then reinstall windows. This external backup hard drive was also shared with a MAC and came with minimal instructions...so of course I was completely clueless as to how to use it. Customer service lines in India did no good and left me even more frustrated than before.

Soo...now I'm back to square one. I'd love to try fixing the problem...if I could only locate it. I'd still love to back it up, but I'll try to focus on one problem at a time

Thanks for reading and let me know if anything needs to be explained further!

[TimW]

Welcome to Major Geeks!

Please read ALL of this message including the notes before doing anything.

Pleases follow the instructions in the below link:

READ & RUN ME FIRST. Malware Removal Guide


and attach the requested logs when you finish these instructions.

• **** If something does not run, write down the info to explain to us later but keep on going. ****
• Do not assume that because one step does not work that they all will not. MGtools will frequently run even when all other tools will not.

• After completing the READ & RUN ME and attaching your logs, make sure that you tell us what problems still remain ( if any still do )!

Helpful Notes:

1. If you run into problems trying to run the READ & RUN ME or any of the scans in normal boot mode, you can run the steps in safe boot mode but make sure you tell us what you did later when you post logs. See the below if you do not know how to boot in safe mode:
   
   • Starting your computer in Safe mode
2. If you have problems downloading on the problem PC, download the tools and the manual updates for SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes ( links are given in the READ & RUN ME) onto another PC and then burn to a CD. Then copy them to the problem PC. You will have to skip getting updates if (and only if) your internet connection does not work. Yes you could use a flash drive too but flash drives are writeable and infections can spread to them.
3. If you cannot seem to login to an infected user account, try using a different user account (if you have one) in either normal or safe boot mode and running only SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes while logged into this other user account. Then reboot and see if you can log into the problem user account. If you can then run SUPERAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes, ComboFix and MGtools on the infected account as requested in the instructions.
4. To avoid additional delay in getting a response, it is strongly advised that after completing the READ & RUN ME you also read this sticky:
   
   • Don't Bump! It Only Hurts You!!!

Any additional post is a bump which will add more delay. Once you attach the logs, your thread will be in the work queue and as stated our system works the oldest threads FIRST.