[StAttitude]

Alright, here's my problem: for about the past week, my friend says that his computer's been running a little slow, and he's been having problems restarting, probably due to spyware.

Just today, we restarted it, and we are able to log on, but then, when it shows the initial desktop, it gets stuck loading forever.
I'm just wondering, is there anything I can do short of a repartition? There's about four years worth of files on the computer that my friend would rather not lose.
Thanks!

 

[speedster123]

see if it loads in safemode. if you are successful, back up your files immediatley.

 

[TheGift73]

What is running on Start up?

Ditto the backing up as well. Last resort scenario, you could always run a repair install as that won't delete any of your files (Pictures/ documents etc)

But, you may well find that you may have a corrupted programme or hard to remove bit of malware slowing down the load process. Have you updated and run your anti-virus? (which AV do you use) Have you also got any decent Malware software like Malwarebytes. It's free.

When the machine does fully load are there any other faults that you have noticed? Are there any signs of trouble in the Event Viewer? And lastly, when did your friend first start to notice the slow down and had he/she added any new programmes and or hardware?

 

[StAttitude]

Alright, I tried starting it up in safe mode, but once I logged in, it locked up and I got a BSOD, along with the error message:
"STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x80000007 (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down"
Any ideas on where to go from here?

Unfortunately, I can't tell what is running during startup, because I can't access the system once I log on; it locks up practically immediately, save mouse movement. I know that the computer in question used McAfee, which was updated, but past that, I don't think that there was any additional protection software. When I did take a quick glance at the processes the last time I was able to log in to the system, I know there were a lot of processes running. The only one that stuck out strongly to me was waol.exe. There may have been others that I didn't notice, as I'm not really a spyware guru, but I recalled reading that waol could be quite problematic.
Thanks again for the help, guys. I really appreciate it.

 

[StAttitude]

Alright, sorry about the lack of updates.
I've managed to boot into Safe Mode, but I need to be able to access my external hard drive in order to put my files somewhere.
I know that many drivers don't load in Safe Mode, but is there a way to access my drive from there?
Thanks

 

[Dracia]

waol.exe is usually a part of AOL, but it can sometimes disguise itself as a trojan under that name.