[qiTsuk]

Hello everyone.

Recently my laptop's been acting up a little. It's not yet come to the point where I'm ready to do a full wipe (mainly because I currently have no option to make backup of my most important files), and I am mainly interested if any one else has run into this issue.

The problem is, when I start up my laptop (boots in no time, SSD <3) Windows hangs on the Gray Startup screen with the white circling circles.

Hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del will show my login screen image and the wireless icon, one more (I don't remember which) and the power icon. So far I've fixed it by doing this and then going to power options, and restarting the computer. Second time around it usually goes directly to the logon screen. But this is not an ideal solution.

Any one have an idea as to why this could be happening? The laptop is relatively new and I have Avira installed and up-to-date.

Any insight or suggestions on how to fix this are greatly appreciated.

 

[Masterchiefxx17]

Hi and Welcome to TSF!

So you can boot to the desktop?

My first recommendation is that you DO backup all of your files even if its through safe mode.

Have you installed any new software lately? Any new drivers?

 

[qiTsuk]

Thanks.

Yes, I can boot to the desktop, however at times it requires a reboot even though I just booted the laptop.

The problem with doing a backup is that I don't really have anywhere to backup my files. So I am hoping that this can be resolved without the need for a wipe. If not, I will find a way! ^_^

The only new software as of late is TeamSpeak and Scrap Mechanic, none of which are installed on my System Drive. No new drivers, since the last Nvidia update (those are quite frequent, so I don't remember when the last one was).

But other than that, nothing has really changed.

 

[spunk.funk]

You can backup up to 15Gb of data for free to any of the Cloud services (eg) Google Drive, MS One Drive, iCloud, etc. Just drag and drop, copy and paste your personal files (eg) pictures, music, documents to the cloud service. You can also have more then one service. Or get yourself an external HDD or use both.
As for the computer problem, Does this happen on cold boot or waking from sleep? If happening on a cold boot, try a Clean Boot, if this works, try adding one startup item at a time until the computer doesn't boot, then you will know what the problematic program is.

 

[qiTsuk]

I that I could use different online cloud storages but that's moot point as my download speed is crap and my upload speed is even worse. Add to that, that we're talking about a LOT of files. All my Android Studio projects, all my Visual Studio project. I would take so long to upload that my computer would be out dated by the time i was done uploading.

The better option will be getting an external HDD and I have thought of doing so. I took a screenshot of my startup's. Now they haven't changed in the last 3 months. And this has started happening within the last week, so I am doubtful that any of them are the culprit.

Now on to your question. It only happens on cold boot. And it only happens 1 in 5 times. And then a reboot will handle it. However, it does annoy me.

When I have the time however, I will try to perfom a clean boot.

 

[spunk.funk]

Well, you already have Google Drive, to save your backups to.
I see you have UTorrent and that is set to Start with Windows. TSF is opposed to Bit Torrent as they believe that this is used only for pirated software because of this you may be infected. The rest of the mods on this site will not help you because of this. UTorrent is set to start with Windows. Open UTorrent and go to toolbar to Options/Preferences/General uncheck Start with Windows. restart and see if that helps.
Please try a Clean Boot, If this does not help, click on the link in my signature for Virus/Malware Help and do those things and post in that section of the forum and not here please.

 

[qiTsuk]

Yes, I have uTorrent installed. I would like to point out that I do not use this for downloading pirated software, believe it or not. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for having Bit Torrent clients installed. I.E. I have used it to download the different Linux Distroes that I have had. The reason being that BitTorrent has often given me better download speeds and the opportunity to resume my downloads. As I stated I have a slow internet connection and downloading the ~1Gb that Ubuntu is, takes 2-3 days. Chrome does not support resuming downloads from most sites and leaving my laptop on for extended periods of time like that is not a viable option. I have on my desktop never downloaded any pirated software, and the first thing I did when this happened was running a full malware check and virus scan with no results.

 

[spunk.funk]

I don't care if you use bit torrent, but everyone else here does, and will probably close the thread if you keep mentioning it.
As I stated, try stopping uTorrent from starting with Windows, see if this helps
You still may be infected as many malware programs do not catch everything.
try a Clean Boot see if that helps.
There is no harm in posting over at the security section of the forum to get a clean bill of health.