Laptop at times almost frozen

[Juliet]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...-the-home-page
The above link will show you how to reset your Firefox home page.

[gin_jammer]

The website in #6 was helpful. Thanks! I think I may have the laptop running as well as it was when we started this thread. If it's still behaving this well tomorrow, I'll go back to #4 and try to follow your instructions.

[Juliet]

Thank you for the info.

[gin_jammer]

I discovered that much of my problem was being caused by my ISP. They admitted that their network had been intermittent (in my neighborhood) and worked on it for days. They also admitted that my cable modem should have been upgraded when they bought out my former ISP, and they gave me a new supposedly faster one.

That behind me, yesterday I downloaded Emsisoft Emergency Kit, and as Administrator, ran emergency kit scanner. Emsisoft scanner found nothing, so there was nothing in the log. I downloaded and installed the Emsisoft Anti-malware, and this seemed to trigger a violent reaction. I was unable to control laptop from keyboard for so long (about an hour) that I did a restart. Once it had rebooted, which appeared to be normal, it ran so slow that I could not do anything.

I noticed the Hard Drive light ON continuously rather than blinking like normal, so I ran the Task Manager, which opened but extremely slowly.It showed only the Task Manager running, but CPU Usage was 45-70% and occasionally 100%. Physical memory usage was 1.47-1.57 GB. I attempted to get a screen shot of Task Manager, and the laptop was so slow that it proved impossible.

I let the system run undisturbed, and after about half an hour was able to open Mozilla Thunderbird and send/receive e-mail.

This morning when I ran my browser (Mozilla Firefox), it launched and connected to the Internet nearly normally, so I ran the Task Manager and made a screen shot of its Performance Screen, which is attached. While I was formatting and cropping the attached image, an Emsisoft popup suggested that Adobe Photoshop is malware.

Suggestions?

[Juliet]

yesterday I downloaded Emsisoft Emergency Kit, and as Administrator, ran emergency kit scanner. Emsisoft scanner found nothing, so there was nothing in the log. I downloaded and installed the Emsisoft Anti-malware, and this seemed to trigger a violent reaction. I was unable to control laptop from keyboard for so long (about an hour) that I did a restart. Once it had rebooted, which appeared to be normal, it ran so slow that I could not do anything.

It's possible it's running into interference with already onboard AVG Antivirus and Malwarebytes version 3.5.1.2522, which is an onboard anti-malware app.

If you want to keep and use Emsisoft Anti-malware it is most likely you'll have to remove MalwareBytes.

As of right now I have no idea why Adobe is being picked up as infected.

[gin_jammer]

I uninstalled Emsisoft. My laptop is back to merely irritating performance. It seems to take longer than normal to Start, and to launch Firefox or Thunderbird. Once they're open, operation is nearly normal.

[Juliet]

Ever check to see if your running low on space?, hard drive?

Let me look for remnants of apps earlier removed.

• Right-Click FRST.exe / FRST64.exe and select Run as administrator to run the programme.
• Click Yes to the disclaimer.
• Ensure the Addition.txt box is checked.
• Click the Scan button and let the programme run.
• Upon completion, click OK, then OK on the Addition.txt pop up screen.
• Two logs (FRST.txt & Addition.txt) will now be open on your Desktop. Copy the contents of both logs and paste in your next reply.
  

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Let's see if there are any startup items we can disable to improve performance.

Go here to download HJT
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/hijackthis/

• Save HJTsetup.exe to your desktop.
• Doubleclick on the HJTsetup.exe icon on your desktop.
• By default it will install to C:\Program Files\Hijack This.
• Continue to click Next in the setup dialogue boxes until you get to the Select Addition Tasks dialogue.
• Put a check by Create a desktop icon then click Next again.
• Continue to follow the rest of the prompts from there.
• At the final dialogue box click Finish and it will launch Hijack This.
• Click on the Do a system scan and save a logfile button. It will scan and the log should open in notepad.
• Click on "Edit > Select All" then click on "Edit > Copy" to copy the entire contents of the log.

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