PC unresponsive on startup

[Rawkus]

Right guys got a bit of a headache here.

My rig has recently been hanging on startup and i know somethings not quite right. It will boot to desktop like lightning but all icons and start button are completely unresponsive to mouse and keyboard. The commands will eventually execute but it sometimes takes a good 5 - 10 minutes for any response at all.

I have tried stopping all the startup programs and scanned for malware and viruses with malware bytes and Kaspersky and found a couple of trojans but they're gone now from what i can see...

I can't recall and changes before this started happening...

This computer is lightning fast when it gets up ang going its just that initial hang that worries me.

I'm running:
Windows 7
OCZ Vertex 4 120gb SSD
2 x WD Caviar Red 2tb in RAID 0
Asus Sabertooth X79
Core i7 3930k
16GB Corsair Vengeance
EVGA GTX 680 SC
and Corsair 1050w PSU

Other perhiperals:
External 2TB HDD
Corsair K90 and M60
and vengeance 2000
Now i've never experienced this on a system that didnt then exhibit slowdown during normal use but its only slow during those first moments... I would defrag but all volumes show 0% fragmentation...

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[Phage]

Not entirely sure, but if you found a couple of Trojans there's probably a lot more malware. We can ruile out hardware as everything works as it should albeit slowly.
My advice would be a complete re-install. (nuke it from orbit !)

[aramil]

As above the damage is done.

Time to backup and SCAN all personnal files and your raid array from a bootable recovery anti virus disc, and then WIPE the SSD including ALL partitions (write to zeros)

And reinstall. And be careful what you trust to install.

[Shirty]

If you want to try one more thing before nuking, it's always worth running a boot-time low-level scan. Most of the big AV companies provide ISOs for these. I think the last one I used was from Avira, but they're all pretty good since they have unadulterated access to all files (running as they do from outside the Windows environment). I've rescued a couple of rigs from the precipice without the need to reformat over the years, but sometimes you just need to start from scratch.

[Raz316]

I used to get this with my PC (probably considered mid range now, possible mid to low). Once it was going it was fine, but the start up was frustratingly slow with task manager showing little or no CPU activity. I've also had it on an old machine with a USB wireless dongle.

So for a start, I would try unplugging everything except the keyboard. See if that makes a difference.

(I know you've done this but) I disabled as many automatically loading programs as possible. Steam and Dropbox (especially) were probably the worst offenders. They were not CPU intensive but did a lot of disk indexing and verification (which is difficult to monitor with task manager) - Process Explorer lets you see disk IO quite easily - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896653.aspx

Note : I do not have an SSD, the following shouldn't apply to SSD drives) I also did a full defrag using ultra defrag of my HDD, which completely reorganises it, regardless of how defragged it is - http://portableapps.com/apps/utiliti...efrag-portable

Like what has already been said, I would be wary of the fact trojans were found on your computer, who knows what kind of mess was left behind. It might be worth creating a new user and logging in as that, potentially there could be an issue with the account you are logging in to.

[shaithis]

Almost certainly havoc brought on by the trojans payloads. Many will change registry permissions, causing timeouts during boot.

Windows 7 installed on SSD, external 2TB drive.....when you reinstall, setup windows backup! It won't take long to have a daily or weekly system image go to the large HDD and it's scheduled, so it happens without you having to manually do it.

[ZaO]

if you do reinstall the os then make sure to write over the drive as someone already said. don't just format it because that doesn't really wipe anything. had an infected computer years back. i formatted the drive and reinstalled xp. when i booted xp it was still infected. adware popping up right off the bat lol. there is a program called boot & nuke which i used to use for this. it runs off a bootable cd.

[Saracen]

I agree with the above about damage from infections, but would stress that, were it me, I'd take a hard look at the results of things like process inspector. It's possibke that some process is running on startup that it taking mist of the processor time, and a possible candidate is an AV scan, especially if it's set to a high priority. You might be able to avoid a rebuild.

Having said that, personally, after a serious infection, I have issues with confidence if I disinfect but still have issues, or possibly even if I don't. I prefer to do a proper rebuild, including removing all drive partitions, etc, and really building, not just ground up, but also the foundations.

[Zak33]

Having said that, personally, after a serious infection, I have issues with confidence if I disinfect but still have issues, or possibly even if I don't. I prefer to do a proper rebuild, including removing all drive partitions, etc, and really building, not just ground up, but also the foundations.

this.. with a digger for deeper foundations

[jigger]

10 minutes seems a very long time for the system to stall every boot up. The system isn't part of a network by any chance is it?