Hey guys,

I'm having some issues with windows 7 on my DAW. It just seems to be acting funny and I can't seem to nail down what the issue is. Some of the problems include Sonar freezing, although this might be a Sonar issue.. But Windows is also just acting strange, when I rename a file on the desktop it doesn't rename the file I selected; it just randomly picks a desktop icon and renames it instead. Sometimes when I try to launch the TH2 standalone it just doesn't do anything. When I shut it down, it won't shut down it goes past the "log off" screen and says "Windows is shutting down, don't unplug your computer" and it just sits there forever, never actually shutting down. Recently I installed Bitdefender antivirus on it, and when it was scanning it also froze, the time kept on counting, but it quit scanning the hard drive for 23 hours... Once I got it to run it indicated there were no viruses. 

Any techie guys have any suggestions here?

So far I've ran Memtest86 with 4 successful passes, and I've used Tune Up HD, which seems to indicate that there's nothing wrong with my hard drives, no bad sectors and transfer rates seem okay. I tried using the windows 7 repair feature from the disk, and it says that there's nothing wrong with my installation. I've also used command prompt to scan my installation for corrupt windows files, it also says there is nothing wrong.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next, maybe my motherboard is failing? 

It sounds as if you may need to clean install Windows 7. I wouldn't add any more antivirus other than MS's own security essentials.

I would add 4 more GB of ram too. 

It sounds like you have a bunch of viruses on the computer, and if you wait until AFTER you suspect they are there to download antivirus software, it will also be affected by the viruses.

It used to be that if you bought anti-virus software from the store, that you could boot from it and scrub your ailing drive of any viruses.  I have gone soooo long without viruses that I do not remember how one would create a similar boot disc to do the same

Avast seems to sell one for like $10.  Here is one from Kapersky that seems to be free: http://support.kaspersky.com/4162

You definitely want to download and create the disc from a separate computer, and THEN boot up your computer to let it scrub.  If you have trouble booting to the CD drive, you can start hitting F12 during start up to display the boot menu, or you can alter your BIOS boot priority settings to make your CD/DVD the first bootable device.  Look for the 'hit any key to boot from DVD' message and hit enter - or some other key.

Anyways, I hope that helps.

When I remove viruses from people's computers I take their physical drive and plug it into my computer, which then sees it as a data drive, which means that any viruses on it will not boot up into my memory.  I then use MY Avast antivirus software to scrub their drive.

At any rate, you have some things to check into and decide.  I DO think that weird behavior like that is an indication that you have some 'critters' in your computer.

Bob Bone

run malwarebytes

click here don't download from anywhere else - no other software comes close at catching nasties

Thanks for the reply's. Now I've done a boot scan of the hard drive with Bitdefender, and Avira, and they both found nothing. I find it hard to believe that these two antiviruses wouldn't find anything. I'm quite sure that I do not have a virus. 

A couple of questions for you.

1.  Were these antivirus programs downloaded onto your computer AFTER you began to see the weirdness?  If so, they may have been compromised by viruses.  Whichever program you choose to use MUST be downloaded on a different computer and put onto either a rescue disk or a flash drive.

2.  When you rename an item on your desktop, I am quite confused on how this could happen, as when you are in the rename process itself you are literally typing in the text box for the item you are renaming.  Can you please explain this a bit more?

Perhaps if you have no other options, backup all and do a clean install of Win 7, and then re-install the world.  Make sure you apply patches after the install, such as any released service packs and such.  There will be a bunch of security fixes.  As the patches are applied in layers, you will have a lot of cycling through the check for updates - install updates process.

Bob Bone


Bob Bone

robert_e_bone


It sounds like you have a bunch of viruses on the computer, and if you wait until AFTER you suspect they are there to download antivirus software, it will also be affected by the viruses.

It used to be that if you bought anti-virus software from the store, that you could boot from it and scrub your ailing drive of any viruses.  I have gone soooo long without viruses that I do not remember how one would create a similar boot disc to do the same

Avast seems to sell one for like $10.  Here is one from Kapersky that seems to be free: http://support.kaspersky.com/4162

You definitely want to download and create the disc from a separate computer, and THEN boot up your computer to let it scrub.  If you have trouble booting to the CD drive, you can start hitting F12 during start up to display the boot menu, or you can alter your BIOS boot priority settings to make your CD/DVD the first bootable device.  Look for the 'hit any key to boot from DVD' message and hit enter - or some other key.

Anyways, I hope that helps.

When I remove viruses from people's computers I take their physical drive and plug it into my computer, which then sees it as a data drive, which means that any viruses on it will not boot up into my memory.  I then use MY Avast antivirus software to scrub their drive.

At any rate, you have some things to check into and decide.  I DO think that weird behavior like that is an indication that you have some 'critters' in your computer.

Bob Bone

Sorry Bob but most of that just isn't true

Downloading an exe file for antivirus software cannot be corrupted by a by a virus that already exists, it just can't


Removing their drive and plugging into your computer carries many risks


You don't need to download to a separate computer. Many virus infections will block the well known sites anyway. The safest way is to start the machine in 'safe mode with networking' thus bypassing all of the startup files which can harbour potential infections




oh and to the OP - (once again) run Malwarebytes

It is not Sonar. I base this on the fact that other programs are freezing too. In addition to this it is locking up on shut down. This sounds like a system issue. Sonar has nothing to do with this. 

If it is not a virus then it could be a bloated registry or a configuration problem. Or you have to many things running in the background and you don't have enough ram. This causes the computer to use the hard drive to simulate ram, otherwise known as virtual ram.

So as you can see it can be anything. I agree with John. Maybe a clean OS install will take care of the problem. When is the last time you did a clean install? If your system is locking up it can be a number of things. 

bitdefender is an excellent paid product and well worth the money. Please ignore advice to use other virus scanners, thats just flag waving (and no I dont use bitdefender but see no reason why I shouldn't, it has a great reputation). Do you have more than one virus scanner or malware scanner installed? If so remove all and reinstall bitdefender. Running more than one antivirus can cause conflicts giving the sort of symptoms you describe.

CakeAlexS


bitdefender is an excellent paid product and well worth the money. Please ignore advice to use other virus scanners, thats just flag waving (and no I dont use bitdefender but see no reason why I shouldn't, it has a great reputation). Do you have more than one virus scanner or malware scanner installed? If so remove all and reinstall bitdefender. Running more than one antivirus can cause conflicts giving the sort of symptoms you describe.

I agree bitdefender is an excellent anti virus program but I wasn't advocating adding another anti virus program - I was suggesting a malware removal tool which will very often detect stuff that your anti virus software has let through :)


As others have said, sometimes a clean install is the best solution if only to rule the O/S out of the equation - faulty RAM could cause this, a bad driver, an overheating graphics card etc. The list is endless and without being sat at the machine reading crash dumps and error logs we are all speculating :)