Windows 7 may be dying. Please help me Resuscitate.

[JarJarBanksy]

Let me just preface this by saying, I've already typed a lot of this and my pinky hit a button causing this text box to be de-selected. I was hitting the backspace key as I did that. I now get to retype a good chunk of text. I hope you'll forgive me if at any point I come across as wanting to kill something, like perhaps murder a carrot. Edit: I found out after retyping what I had lost that there is save functionality. Goldurn.

 

So, this story begins fairly recently. There was a Windows Update on Wednesday the 14th. I believe this is where my story starts, however this first issue may well have started Wednesday morning before the application of the update. Please be wary of this inconsistency.

 

Issue #1

Anyhow, this first issue starts as such. Recently I have set my computer to hibernate instead of shutting down because it loads much faster. Normally this works beautifully. Recently it has instead resulted in a myriad of issues when I wake my computer. 

 

So, I turn my computer on and it supposedly loads from where it left off, which was having a couple of tabs open in Google Chrome. I start my day's browsing by opening up a series of new tabs to check my beloved webcomics of the day. If I recall correctly these tabs simply never did load. They hung indefinitely. During this period I also go to open Microsoft Outlook. So, I see Microsoft Outlook load and start downloading emails. I check them, and move on back to my browser to try and figure out why it's not working. Many refreshes later and looking in the networking center I find no reason why it shouldn't be working. Networking is saying that it is connected both to my dinky 100mbps switch and my 300 mbps wifi. Dafuq? Anyways, I exit Chrome at some point and notice that Outlook has stopped responding. I end the program. At some point I opened Internet Explorer and it never even did fully load the User Interface (UI).

 

At this point I'm starting to think that my system may have been penetrated by something malicious. First thought and action? Open Avast Anti Virus. Again, the UI never fully loads. That scared me because it wasn't even a freaking browser. Next step? Run Malwarebytes. The UI loads. I click the "run scan" button. It wants to update the data base. I know it won't be able to connect so I just click the "Skip Update" button. It did not acknowledge that it was a button or that I was clicking it. It just hung there trying to update its database. 

 

Next step, restart the computer.

 

At some point I believe I managed to get to speedtest.net with google chrome, speeds were abismal. 7 Mbps down, less than 700 Kbps up. Connectivity existed, just was barely functional. Internet should be 7 Megabytes (not bits) down and 1-2 Megabytes (not bits) up. Other devices were at proper speeds.

 

Issue #2

Today I had the computer in hibernate last night, and went to turn it on. Similar internet connectivity issues. Wisened up and just restarted from the get-go.

 

Issue #3

So recently I've been wanting to move my operating system over from my mechanical drive to my Corsair Neutron GTX ssd. The hard drive has more space, and was holding more data than the sdd had space. This means I've had to move stuff off of there. I started this a week and a half ago, originally just removing programs and moving files from places they had built up to my 3TB seagate external drive. I was using WindirStat to help me find the places with the most data. Originally it did not have any discrepancies with Windows Explorer. No differences in terms of space used were emerging. They were reporting the same thing whenever they were refreshed. 

 

So, I decided to continue making space today. This included moving 20 GB of music off of my (C;) drive to my Seagate drive. It was going swimmingly. Files were moving reasonably fast and WindirStat was making me proud by telling me that there was less and less data. I then at some point went into widows explorer and noticed that it was still around 240 GB used (it was slightly north of that, and it has moved by small amounts up and down throughout the day, just I don't know by how much and when).

 

Needless to say, I was alarmed. Moving 40 GB of stuff made around 10 GB difference. (Or perhaps less again, amounts are unknown. I wasn't religious about this). I then went on to see if maybe I had mis-remembered the amount of data I had started with. I went on to move some movie content and delete old IOS apps on Itunes. According to Winderstat I had moved a significant amount of data. Again, Windows explorer begged to differ. Fudge nutters.

 

Issue #3

In what may have been fatal foolishness I went and right clicked the (C:) drive and clicked properties from the right click menu. I then went to disk cleanup (at the bottom right of the pie chart). It told me with a straight and honest face, that it could clear away a whole 60 GB of temporary files. First thought? HALLELUJAH! I'VE FOUND THE SACRED BUTTON! Guess what? According to Windows Explorer it may have done jack all. I may have accidentally interrupted it (I totally did) when I went to go do the same thing at the same time to the SSD (F:). This may have been a bad idea. 

 

So, I went and opened up the menu again, and guess what? It takes a couple times to get it to open again. Wasn't working at first. Eventually it works. Guess what? It says it now has around 53 or 58 GB of space from temporary files it can delete. After a little bit of user error I managed to run it correctly again.

 

Windows Explorer is still not saying that there is any difference in data. Fudge.

 

I forget when, but at some point earlier today (morningish) I was made to restart the computer. It did not restart properly. It was a basic Windows XP looking menu about how it needed to fix an issue with Windows. It said it could not fix the issue automatically, but when I restarted it Windows booted nicely. I also had an issue at one point where it was saying that the built in disc defragmenter was not installed. I got a menu telling me to go to the control panel and click "install programs". No such menu was showing up at that point in time.

 

Issue #4

Today Microsoft released another Windows 7 update. I updated. Now, this update does not seem to have affected the previous issue. In fact, I am at a point where Windirstat reports 120 GB even and Explorer is reporting twice that, give or take 3 GB depending on the last disk cleanup and any other stuff it does.

 

So, I after this update, I've notices that windows does not want to load certain programs. Even if I go to the location of the EXE, and I click that one directly, it will spit out an error saying the file can't be found. I can not run Windirstat as Admin, only normally. I can't get DXtory to work either way. Some things in Explorer don't work, like trying to get to the Uninstall programs menu. The button can be clicked but I see no disk activity when I click it, or some other buttons.

 

At this point the only reason I haven't nuked it is because I don't want to lose my beloved Winamp Pro. With the service that allows me to activate Winamp Pro being down, nuking this computer will make me lose it potentially forever.

 

Please Help. SOS. Will smooch if you can fix.

[SImoHayha]

Am not sure but you might have to delete some data involving the hibernation.......... not sure......

 

also I never update my windows........always manually do it after a update comes out and it works after a week or so

[tmlhalo]

-snip-

Please follow your topic with the button in the top right corner. 

Try to get a back up of Winamp Pro onto another drive in case the worst happens.

Can you run a virus scan? MalwareBytes is free if you need one.

Try CCleaner for finding registry issues and junk files that may be taking up that space.

Can you run describe the drive giving you issues further? Age, any clicking noise, constant revving, and model?

How much space is the hibernation file taking up? Don't delete just check size for now.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140/what-is-hiberfil.sys-and-how-do-i-delete-it/

Have you tried System Restore to a point before the issue originally happened?

[JarJarBanksy]

Please follow your topic with the button in the top right corner. 

Try to get a back up of Winamp Pro onto another drive in case the worst happens.

Can you run a virus scan? MalwareBytes is free if you need one.

Try CCleaner for finding registry issues and junk files that may be taking up that space.

Can you run describe the drive giving you issues further? Age, any clicking noise, constant revving, and model?

How much space is the hibernation file taking up? Don't delete just check size for now.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140/what-is-hiberfil.sys-and-how-do-i-delete-it/

Have you tried System Restore to a point before the issue originally happened?

It's probably not a hardware failure. I don't hear any issues and HDTune  has not reported any issues with my hard drive, and I checked it fairly recently.

 

I'm had not thought about rolling back windows. I never really think about that bit of functionality. A bit of google-fu should help me with this.

 

I'll try CCleaner first though if I can get past Windows Startup Repair.

 

Speaking of startup, I had actually set Avast to do a boot time scan to try and figure out the issues. It would probably work if I could get past Startup Repair. Hopefully I will be able to do so later today.