Computer Randomly Freezing

[MadMan133]

Good afternoon everyone,

 

I recently had a security scare when I found a rootkit on my computer. Deciding that just getting rid of the rootkit with antivirus wasn't enough, I nuked the computer and started over from scratch with a complete format and fresh install of windows 10. Since then I have been getting random freezes that I can't seem to get rid of. Sometimes it freezes every 10 minutes, sometimes it's up for days without a problem. Doesn't seem to happen when I am doing anything particular and sometimes I go to wake the computer up and find that it's frozen. All drivers are updated, bios is updated, windows is updated but not activated (didn't want to activate in case I need to wipe again). Reliability Monitor just says unexpected restart (when I restart after it freezes). Bare minimum software installed for work. Where else can I look or try to figure out what is causing the issue?

 

Specs:

Strix 550E

5800X w/AIO

32gb Gskill 3400 (had additional 16gb of mismatched memory in that always worked previously, took it out and still freezing)

3090FE

500gb nvme for boot

Random hard drives

1200W PSU

 

Thanks for your help!

[lcboboy]

Could you try re downloading windows? if this started right after you got a new install i think it would fix it and since it is a new install what is there to lose?

[MadMan133]

10-4 I can definitely give that a go

[MadMan133]

Wiped and started over yesterday afternoon, was all good last night and then just had another freeze this morning. Looked in event log and nothing is standing out to me.

[MadMan133]

Ran SFC and DISM. SFC said it found and fixed a problem. However when I looked at the CBS log it says it repaired 0 components so I'm not actually sure what it repaired or did. Ran DISM after that and it found no issues. I'll let the system run and see if it's fixed or not.

 

Any ideas why SFC would find something on a clean install though?

[Mavendow]

If you're repeatedly having freezes on a fresh install after finding a rootkit, then there's three possible causes:

 

• Windows 10 just doesn't like your PC. Check for BIOS updates.
• The rootkit may still be attached to some other files on one of your HDDs. I don't know what rootkit tools you used but I'd suggest GMER as that one looks for general rootkit presence in addition to signatures and files. Sometimes rootkits hide themselves in ADS which are basically secret files attached to real files. GMER is good at finding these. Ofc you could also format your drives as literally anything other than NTFS since no other filesystem I'm aware of has stupid secret files - but that's a lot of work. Just note that GMER also has a lot of false positives.
• The rootkit may have a UEFI/BIOS component. Years ago I got one of these bastards on my PC and could not understand how it kept coming back even on a fresh install with literally no other files from the old drives. These kinds of rootkits are pretty rare but also a pain in the ass to remove. If you can flash the BIOS then great, in my case it prevented me from updating the BIOS, so I just said "fk it" and bought a new mobo.

[MadMan133]

So I've continued to have freezes today. Downloaded gmer and ran it twice, both times it runs for awhile and then closes? Doesn't spit out a log or anything that I can find. Is it supposed to do that? Or is that a sign there's something still there?

[Mavendow]

10 minutes ago, MadMan133 said:

So I've continued to have freezes today. Downloaded gmer and ran it twice, both times it runs for awhile and then closes? Doesn't spit out a log or anything that I can find. Is it supposed to do that? Or is that a sign there's something still there?

It's supposed to run for a moment (checking memory) then stop and let you select the things you want to run. It's a rather old tool so it may not be compatible with something. It's really a shame how few anti-rootkit tools are still being developed. I dunno, maybe try it in safe mode.

[MadMan133]

It does the memory check thing and then lets me select what I want to scan, then during the scan is when it closes.

 

From their website it looks like GMER was bought/incorporated into Avast. Downloaded Avast and scanned everything and it found nothing. It was originally found with Malware bytes anti-rootkit, which i scanned with again and found nothing. I guess it's possible that it's attached itself to the BIOS/UEFI but from my understanding that is pretty rare and I don't see any signs of that being the case except for possibly the freezing.

 

Before this last wipe I did a BIOS update so that should be good to go.

 

Each time I've wiped I've wipe all the hard drive in the computer. I do have a NAS that isn't getting wiped and is connected but I've scanned that and found nothing.

 

What other ways are there to detect what is causing the freezes? I've tried reliability monitor and event viewer, both just say unexpected restart which is from when it becomes unresponsive and I have to hard restart.