I consider myself to be pretty with it for techie stuff, but my machine is behaving so wildly. I swore it had a virus, but couldnt find any traces of it. Used Malwarebytes, AVG, nortons, Prosuite, Combofix...you name it. cant hunt the thing down, and then I saw that whatever was being scanned it was skipping over my pictures and documents as "locked" files. now, I can see my photos, but none of the antivirus stuff was scanning in there. I tried running as Admin, but it did the same thing. Frequently the CPU would speed up to be 95% usage! no programs were running, and yet there it sat revving away. it would stop after a minute, but it should NOT be doing that.

I pulled ALL my documents, pictures and so on, onto a thumb drive and then I restored my computer back to out of the box condition. I have reinstalled the OS and have done ALL the updates. I put Proscan suite back on it, because I really like it. I have run Malwarebytes and so on, and it shows clean, but my CPU is still doing the run away thing. not nearly as often, but its still at it. I dont have a single photo or document back on this machine yet, so if it was something hiding in the photo/doc files it hasnt even touched the USB port let alone had any time to reload itself.

Ideas? suggestions? hints? tips? tricks? I cannot afford to take this thing to a shop. Its a quad core processor running Windows 7 with all updates in place. I have a terrabyte HD so no worries there. im just so frustrated that I have this fancy machine, and it runs like an old worn out junker. Any advice or tricks would be appreciated.

Have you tried a cleaner?
Ccleaner, Glary Utilities are the ones I have used most often.

here's more w/ ratings/reviews & download info -
http://download.cnet.com/1770-2018_4...tsTile;navForm

Or try Hijack this - it will make a list of what is actually running on your system - then you can look up each thing if you don't recognize it & go from there. you can get it from the cnet link or Google for it.

We just had a crash from an Ad-aware download. We still do not have our Win 7 laptop running on the internet. It won't restore,
and hubby is waiting for son to return from a vacation.

I am losing faith in the scanning programs myself. This happened after Ad-aware downloaded its new stuff before a scan which we do weekly.

Blech.

I have done Ccleaner and have cleaned the registry as well as defragged the registry and the hard drive. its bizzare! I feel like the antivirus stuff is skipping right past whatever this is! Frustrating as I have used the free and the paid programs and its still there! I have done the big boy combo fix and so on, so...im confused. I need this machine, so I am kinda freaked out.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Defective parts or overheating???
Sometimes you just get parts that go bad...

Dejibo,

Looks like you may have too much(Malwarebytes, AVG, nortons, Prosuite, Combofix...Proscan?) running on your system. Try uninstalling all but just one antivirus program, preferably just a standalone antivirus program and not some bloated "suite" of programs.

That quad core machine with Windows 7 should be quick and nimble, not bloated & draggy,