Not CoTH related- Well, slightly.

[Anski]

Myself, I believe AVG is in itself impossible to remove, flagrantly heavy on resources, and systematic trash. It takes far too long and produces far too little result. Uncustomizeable, unshapeable in any form other to just select when your scan goes off, it's like putting a tall stone tower in your computer that won't move, is always there regardless and can only see what's in clear sight. The true problems are cleared by the source, and there are many more scanners that will scan the source first and only the source, scanning the entire computer as a secondary option. Predator removers such as Malwarebytes Anti-Malware are roughly all I use, Spybot S&D, and HijackThis are all essential tools, all free.

However, with these they comprise the four horsemen of Anti-Virus, coupled with CCleaner to stop registry and firewall mishaps that occur with most viruses. I weep 'em and sweep 'em with these tools, HijackThis first to produce a report and catch proxies that might be running in a system, MBAM next to sniff out and burn down what it finds, Spybot S&D to seriously recoil any internally damaging ones, especially ones that hijack the comp. After running these I use CCleaner to cover up any registry and interwoven gaps.

However, these are not always adequate, and as such, if those are the Four Horsemen, this is Hades.

Combofix is a very, very dangerous tool. It should never, ever be the first resort and always used with absolute and extreme caution. It will restart your computer, and as such look through the boot drivers and see what's not supposed to be around. It takes quite a while, and it's solved all of my major problems the Four Horsemen couldn't fix. However, when I say it is dangerous I do not lie to you. It can seriously damage a system if used improperly and on a whim. Google your problem, make sure everything that could have been done has been done. There are many internet forums with many posts over hijack's of the system, and they constantly say that you should only use Combofix when someone instructs you to, as it is incredibly dangerous. This is for things that are seriously hijacking your computer, burning things down and causing too much damage.

Of course, this isn't to say that it should be used at all, honestly. If something has wormed it's way so far into the system that it won't come out, a clean reinstall of your OS is always a very, very good thing for your computer. It's like sitting in a house for three years, all the windows shut and boarded, and the temperature set up to a toasty 95F, and then opening a door and letting in the cool winter breeze fill the place and air it all out. It's a hassle, moving your files to a backup before doing it, but it's so very worth it. Your system's insides, boot drives, everything, will be carbon copy fresh from the presses and your system will be running faster than you could ever expect.

But, who says it's always a virus doing damage?

Perhaps you have too many system processes running, too many things booting with your computer?

Try running a defrag first, and if that's still causing helter skelter, then try the four horsemen.

Thanks for your time,
Anski~

[Nostra]

Personally, I prefer to just wipe my computer completely when this kind of stuff happens, I save my important documents and such on USB/External Hard drives regularly though, might be bit of a hassle for others. But it is always nice to start up the computer afterwards, all the crap you save up because it's totally cool but then never look again is gone together with any virus/malware you had which makes the computer all fast and nice again, hehe.

Edit; as a sidenote this is because I dislike all AV programs I've tried, I only occasionally download a scanner to check if it's wiping them. I believe in common sense, and thus try to avoid that which seems suspicious or overly inconspicuous.

[Nostra]

Personally, I prefer to just wipe my computer completely when this kind of stuff happens, I save my important documents and such on USB/External Hard drives regularly though, might be bit of a hassle for others. But it is always nice to start up the computer afterwards, all the crap you save up because it's totally cool but then never look again is gone together with any virus/malware you had which makes the computer all fast and nice again, hehe.

Edit; as a sidenote this is because I dislike all AV programs I've tried, I only occasionally download a scanner to check if it's wiping them. I believe in common sense, and thus try to avoid that which seems suspicious or overly inconspicuous.

[Grakor456]

I, too, found AVG to be sub-optimal and annoyingly obtrusive. For my malware protection, I use Avast!, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ad-aware. There are other tools you can use, but those three are the ones that have my stamp of approval so far.

HijackThis is useful, but only if you have someone computer savvy who can examine the information it puts out to help you interpret it.

[Grakor456]

I, too, found AVG to be sub-optimal and annoyingly obtrusive. For my malware protection, I use Avast!, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ad-aware. There are other tools you can use, but those three are the ones that have my stamp of approval so far.

HijackThis is useful, but only if you have someone computer savvy who can examine the information it puts out to help you interpret it.

[Judgernaut]

Now, I dont know much but here's my five cents... If the computer has started to crash/and or restart itself and it has become more and more frequent over a long course of time, it sounds like a hardware problem to me...

If it were a virus, its purpose would either be to be undetected and thus do its work or then its just some whackos stupid idea of fun and its purpose would be to do as much dmg as possible on a short span of time. I personally have never heard or experienced a malware that would cause this form of problem... then if it is a software problem, I think its not a virus but rather a stack of updates that have over time become more and more unstable or some software that is poorly done. Now, Im very inexperienced with software so dont take my word for it.

But, to return to the hardware issue, my money is on heating issues... does the computer fans sound more noisy than before? Is the computer exterior literally warm/hot to touch? Computer fans over time become noisy and they slow down do to the oil inside them vaporating and thus causing friction. Giving them maintanenance is easy and you can find some vieos about it from say youtube. But what I am trying to say is that, if the fans are noisy, its either one of these two reasons... 1. they are running on full speed due to overheating in the computer, most likely motherboard or more precisly CPU(there is also the cooling liquid on the CPU chip and this can, if poor quality, become more of a problem than a benefit over time but Im talking like after two years or more) A possible fix to this issue is opening the computer, cleaning it up from any dust, dirt or other particles that do not belong there. Other solutions are updating fans(costs money), updating software that might imrpove heating issues(free).. 2. the fans are out of oil and need maintenance and thus, are running slow, causing the computer to heat up.

Best way to solve this issue though imo, is to buy a cheap external harddrive, save all important files, check them with a virus-scanner and then go ahead and re-install OS(operating system). This way, after the OS has been reintalled(and before you move any of the files from the external hd), you will either notice the restarting issue being gone and thus confirm that it was a software problem or then the restarting happens again and it is apparent that there is a hardware problem with your computer.

When dealing with technology or electronics in general, Occam's razor is the best way to go about with things. Hope it helps

[Judgernaut]

Now, I dont know much but here's my five cents... If the computer has started to crash/and or restart itself and it has become more and more frequent over a long course of time, it sounds like a hardware problem to me...

If it were a virus, its purpose would either be to be undetected and thus do its work or then its just some whackos stupid idea of fun and its purpose would be to do as much dmg as possible on a short span of time. I personally have never heard or experienced a malware that would cause this form of problem... then if it is a software problem, I think its not a virus but rather a stack of updates that have over time become more and more unstable or some software that is poorly done. Now, Im very inexperienced with software so dont take my word for it.

But, to return to the hardware issue, my money is on heating issues... does the computer fans sound more noisy than before? Is the computer exterior literally warm/hot to touch? Computer fans over time become noisy and they slow down do to the oil inside them vaporating and thus causing friction. Giving them maintanenance is easy and you can find some vieos about it from say youtube. But what I am trying to say is that, if the fans are noisy, its either one of these two reasons... 1. they are running on full speed due to overheating in the computer, most likely motherboard or more precisly CPU(there is also the cooling liquid on the CPU chip and this can, if poor quality, become more of a problem than a benefit over time but Im talking like after two years or more) A possible fix to this issue is opening the computer, cleaning it up from any dust, dirt or other particles that do not belong there. Other solutions are updating fans(costs money), updating software that might imrpove heating issues(free).. 2. the fans are out of oil and need maintenance and thus, are running slow, causing the computer to heat up.

Best way to solve this issue though imo, is to buy a cheap external harddrive, save all important files, check them with a virus-scanner and then go ahead and re-install OS(operating system). This way, after the OS has been reintalled(and before you move any of the files from the external hd), you will either notice the restarting issue being gone and thus confirm that it was a software problem or then the restarting happens again and it is apparent that there is a hardware problem with your computer.

When dealing with technology or electronics in general, Occam's razor is the best way to go about with things. Hope it helps

[Judgernaut]

And also I feel compelled to mention that if the computer has been is use for a long time without a thural reboot of the OS, then cleaning the registery can solve this issue once and for all... I once had it(when I used win XP) Installed a new software and then after an hour or two my comp started blue screening/and or rebooting itself. Crash logs didnt reveal anything too helpful and so I turned to google, I found that the new software that I had installed was causing registery problems with some older licenses and thus, causing me computer to become unstable. Now, I have no idea nor have I even tried to understand how that was even possible but I was glad because the fix was extremly simple and easy.

What was the name of the registery cleaning software, for the life of me, I cant recall.

EDIT. This does not go with my Occam's razor way of thinking at all though xD

[Judgernaut]

And also I feel compelled to mention that if the computer has been is use for a long time without a thural reboot of the OS, then cleaning the registery can solve this issue once and for all... I once had it(when I used win XP) Installed a new software and then after an hour or two my comp started blue screening/and or rebooting itself. Crash logs didnt reveal anything too helpful and so I turned to google, I found that the new software that I had installed was causing registery problems with some older licenses and thus, causing me computer to become unstable. Now, I have no idea nor have I even tried to understand how that was even possible but I was glad because the fix was extremly simple and easy.

What was the name of the registery cleaning software, for the life of me, I cant recall.

EDIT. This does not go with my Occam's razor way of thinking at all though xD

[Maelstrom]

Malwarebytes always works the best for me. I'd say download that, run the full scan, and clean your cookies. If that doesn't work, idk. Only thing is, MWB doesn't notify you when it detects malware. You have to scan for it. So I recommend a quick scan daily and a full scan weekly, as the quick scan doesn't always get all the viruses.

[Maelstrom]

Malwarebytes always works the best for me. I'd say download that, run the full scan, and clean your cookies. If that doesn't work, idk. Only thing is, MWB doesn't notify you when it detects malware. You have to scan for it. So I recommend a quick scan daily and a full scan weekly, as the quick scan doesn't always get all the viruses.

[HeroLief]

I seem to have this kind of problem too. I found it happens a lot when I run large amounts of tabs in Paint.NET as well as large graphics rendering in WoW (No, it's not lag, it IS something else). My problem seems to have slowed down when my Dad installed an extra gig of RAM to my computer. As such, I believe it's simply that your computer doesn't have enough memory to process the applications compiling loads of memory usage and the freeze is it entire freezing or stalling as the programs die down due to nonfunctionality. All in all, you probably WILL have to buy some hardware, just a RAM upgrade. Add an extra gig or two.

[HeroLief]

I seem to have this kind of problem too. I found it happens a lot when I run large amounts of tabs in Paint.NET as well as large graphics rendering in WoW (No, it's not lag, it IS something else). My problem seems to have slowed down when my Dad installed an extra gig of RAM to my computer. As such, I believe it's simply that your computer doesn't have enough memory to process the applications compiling loads of memory usage and the freeze is it entire freezing or stalling as the programs die down due to nonfunctionality. All in all, you probably WILL have to buy some hardware, just a RAM upgrade. Add an extra gig or two.