Late last night, I noticed my mouse was hanging up on the screen. This NEVER happens, the PC has a solid 8GB of ram, and I didn't notice the CPU pushing past 60% load. I heard a clicking noise coming from the tower, so I assumed something was wrong with an HDD. But, my first instinct is paranoia of malware, so I shut down the computer and disconnected the internet.
Upon reboot the clicking continued, I tried to check myself into safe mode, CHKDSK took over and started repairing some files on the main boot drive. I thought once that settled, it might load fine, but the boot is SO SLOW now. It takes ages for my main programs to load in the background like Avast (and when I first rebooted, avast was not activated -- leads to more paranoia.)
So, I looked at all the drives and noticed one of my media drives was offline. I assumed this must be the drive that tanked. So, I removed it and now I'm left with my other media drive and boot drive. But, still, Windows is loading SO SLOW. I haven't reconnected to the internet. I'm actually watching the "Logging off" screen sit there for over 5 minutes in a reboot scramble. I've run avast in boot-time and nothing pops up.
I don't think malware could have caused an actual hardware failure... could it have? I also ran a disk check with Seagate Tools on the main boot drives (short generic and SMART) and both pass. I'm not hearing clicking anymore after I removed the other hard drive. So, what gives? Why is my OS still tripping...
EDIT: I also ran a Memory Diagnostic in Repair, and that was clean also.
Upon reboot the clicking continued, I tried to check myself into safe mode, CHKDSK took over and started repairing some files on the main boot drive. I thought once that settled, it might load fine, but the boot is SO SLOW now. It takes ages for my main programs to load in the background like Avast (and when I first rebooted, avast was not activated -- leads to more paranoia.)
So, I looked at all the drives and noticed one of my media drives was offline. I assumed this must be the drive that tanked. So, I removed it and now I'm left with my other media drive and boot drive. But, still, Windows is loading SO SLOW. I haven't reconnected to the internet. I'm actually watching the "Logging off" screen sit there for over 5 minutes in a reboot scramble. I've run avast in boot-time and nothing pops up.
I don't think malware could have caused an actual hardware failure... could it have? I also ran a disk check with Seagate Tools on the main boot drives (short generic and SMART) and both pass. I'm not hearing clicking anymore after I removed the other hard drive. So, what gives? Why is my OS still tripping...
EDIT: I also ran a Memory Diagnostic in Repair, and that was clean also.
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