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Windows 7 freezes up soon after startup - works fine in safe mode

1K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  griplock 
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I'm not a Windows whiz by any means, but I'm usually able to solve the problems I run into on my machines. This one's got me stumped:

I leave my Sony Vaio VGN-FW290J, running Windows 7 SP1, running one night while I go out for some errands. On my return, the thing has crashed pretty bad (I-can't-even-move-the-mouse bad). Whatever. I do a hard restart of the computer, decline safe mode, and the thing starts up just fine. Well, it was pretty slow, actually. Windows freezes up on me within two minutes (it's still loading up startup programs during that time). I entered into a cycle of startup, hard restart, startup, hard restart, ... until I was convinced of the permanence of the issue.

I became unhappy then, since I knew something was wrong, and this computer hadn't had a real problem in about 4 years of usage.

My first thought was to do a virus scan, so I booted into safe mode and started Avast to get cracking. Two "threats" were found in a full scan: both were very old files. I removed them and I still had the same problem.

I then deactivated every single startup program except the ones I thought were absolutely necessary. No beans. I currently have these set to autostart:

  • Alps pointing-device driver (Tracker Pad)
  • HD Audio Control panel (Audio Card)
  • Realtek Voice Manager (Audio Card)
  • Microsoft Windows Operating System
  • ISB Utility (Battery Utility)
  • Catalyst Control Center (Video Card)
I'm not really sure what to do. I haven't been able to localize the crashing to a particular action. If I just start Windows up and don't touch anything, it will crash soon. I can access the system tray and the start menu without it crashing, until it does. I can play music without it crashing, until it does. I can go online without it crashing, until it does.


I am able to move the mouse around during these crashes, usually, but the entire system (programs, start menu, system tray) becomes unresponsive.


Safe mode is working just fine (it crashed a few times during my virus scans, but nothing but good behavior since then).



Any help or ideas would be very much appreciated.
 
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