I mosly use the system for gaming but I'm a game developer (3D programmer) so I do some programming / prototyping on it too. The system is a Dell XPS 8300 (mostly because they're very silent, I was fed up with building my own machines and them always being so noisy).Īs I said I normally use Avast (free) and Malwarebytes (free also) in conjunction with Microsoft Security Essentials. So those symptoms look like an infection. Also going into the Services window I see that the avast service is disabled, and trying to set it to Manual or Automatic results in an 'Access denied' message box. Also, lately, when I start up the system, Avast reports that realtime scanning is disabled, and I can't re-enable it. Once in a while the system will stay responsive long enough to start a scan (Avast/Malwarebytes), but generally it doesn't stay responsive long enough to complete and doesn't find anything in the time it has to work. When I start it up again the same happens again. I am left with the only option to turn off the machine forcefully (pull power cable / press power button 4 seconds).

Even the taskbar and desktop will be frozen, meaning I cannot select icons on the desktop or open the start menu. The mouse cursor still moves, but nothing else works. I may be able to start Task Manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc, but that window will also be unresponsive. First the foreground application will freeze (with 'Not responding' in the title bar), then as I switch to other windows they will each do the same in turn. If I start my computer normally (meaning not in safe mode), either immediately after a reboot or a few minutes later the computer becomes totally unresponsive.

So it may be a misbehaving driver or application instead of an infection, however I don't have any information to help me find out what it might be. Curiously, in Safe Mode (or safe mode with networking which I am using now to post) the system works and doesn't experience these problems. I suspect I have an infection, however from what I can see updated versions of Avast and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware cannot detect anything wrong.

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