Freezes with no warning/BSOD, no HDD activity either.

[alexcheng]

Detailed version:
Well, as the name suggests, I've stumble over some issues with Windows 7 lately. Before I had a partition running Ubuntu on my system, but I've recently removed it (just deleted the whole partition, I know there has to be a safer way of doing that, I just didn't even bother looking for it, if you guys know the right way to do that, please do kindly tell me!), and the first problem I faced was bootloader issues. Easy enough, using the Windows 7 installation CD did the trick, but now that I was able to boot into Windows 7 properly, I started experiencing random freezes. No BSOD, no errors, the system just suddenly stopped responding, no hard drive activity (judging by the HDD activity light), no mouse/keyboard input, no nothing. The reason I'm able to make this thread is because I'm in safe mode right now, and things seem to be working just fine, so I'm guessing this has to be a driver/hardware related problem...?

Brief version:
Computer's messed up, freezes randomly, no hard drive activity, no keyboard/mouse input, everything just freezes where it's at.

Recent event and changes made to the system:
-Downloaded a torrent that had an infected file, I believe Kaspersky found it and disinfected/removed it (Running a full scan as we speak)
-Updated nVidia drivers a few days ago (to 275.33 WHQL)

System Specification:
ASUS N82JV Laptop
Intel Core i5-450M
nVidia GT335M
500GB Hard Drive
4GBs of RAM

Methods tried:
-sfc /scannow command
-Repair options from Windows 7 installation disc

That's it, guys, any help would be really appreciated! Thanks in advance...!!!!!

 

[almartin]

Did you try startup and repair from the win 7 disk? you could also try msconfig from the run menu and shut off some of the startup programs.

 

[alexcheng]

Did you try startup and repair from the win 7 disk? you could also try msconfig from the run menu and shut off some of the startup programs.

yeah I tried starting up from the CD and using the repair option that I get from there, but it only gives me the option to repair problems that's causing the system to boot up and I don't think that's my problem. Just now I booted normally into Windows 7 and every seemed back to normal again, so I decided to run a full virus scan and leave it overnight, I woke up and found the computer shut down already. I don't have any settings that tells my computer to shut down after a period of time, it only hibernates after 5 hours of idle. So I assumed it crashed again... I checked Kaspersky and the scan was never completed, so it definitely crashed again....

 

[alexcheng]

Guys, I just observed that when the system freezes up, it's actually responding, but very very very slowly... The hard drive activity light lights up every now and then, and if I move the mouse, it takes like 2 minutes for it to move. I tried CTR+ALT+DEL, and it worked, because the screen turned black but it moved so slowly I didn't wait for it to finish. This seems to happen only when the system is under load, because I was using it just fine until I ran the virus scan. Any ideas?

 

[sipickles]

happen only when the system is under load

Overheating? Are all your fans operating?

I had a faulty GPU fan which caused similar effect. It always occurred after a different amount of time, depending on load on GPU.

--
EDIT : Noticed you're on a laptop, but could still apply. Check temps in BIOS?

 

[alexcheng]

Thanks for the reply!

I noticed that the system load and the temperature were very high compared to the average load when I'm just surfing the web and stuff. I know that my CPU gets to around 40-60% load when I'm gaming, and temperatures are at around 90 degrees*. Anyway, the system was acting like as if I was gaming; it's always at around 50% load, while I'm doing nothing in the background. I checked resource monitor and the system kernal is using up around 30-40% of the CPU, seems a bit much compared to what I had before... Running a Kaspersky Full Scan boosted the system load right up to 100%, it was almost like switching back to my antique Pentium 4 desktop, it just lagged like there was no tomorrow... Mind you this is a Core i5-450M, I don't remembered anytime when my CPU load went up to 100%, ever.

I'm going to try to scan for some malware later on using Malwarebyte's Antimalware, I'll keep you guys posted!

*Sidenote: When my laptop came fresh outta the box, gaming temperatures were at around 90 degrees already... That's kinda insane, huh? But I've checked the fan and it's clean all right, never checked the heatsink because my models requires a rather complicated procedure to take apart, but if I have to I will do it!