PC Freezing

[ccllnply]

In the last two hours, my PC has frozen 3 times. The first was just randomly on Firefox, the second was opening a large folder full of pictures and the last was just a second ago when I was trying to download malwarebytes. This has just come out of nowhere. I can't remember the last time my PC frozen. I noticed it was a little bit slower than usual lately. Takes a few second more to load up at the start and such. About two days ago I cleaned out the dust from the inside of the case. There was quite an amount but I think I managed to get most of it. I did some cleaning of folders as well, got rid of a lot of useless files out of my documents and downloads folders

Could this be a virus? I don't have a clue what it could be and I'm worried that no one else will have an idea since this just came out of no where.

[Hrothgar Óhreinsaður]

Have you checked your temperatures? How hot is your CPU? If it's running too hot, your system will freeze intermittently. Also, ensure that all cables are inserted firmly into the motherboard and device ports (both power and data cables); one may have been knocked loose when you cleaned out the dust. After checking the cables, leave the case panel off, turn the system back on, and ensure all fans are spinning.

If none of those suggestions fix it, I highly recommend loading a System Restore Point before you deleted those files. You could have deleted something you didn't think was necessary; I've done it before, and experienced the same result. Finally, run some basic maintenance tasks on your system disk: run Disk Cleanup or CCleaner, run System File Checker, run Error-checking with both boxes checked, then run Disk Defrag. In that order.

I hope this helps.

[ccllnply]

Sorry to bring this thread back but it's still not sorted. The help above was great and I did it all but I still have problems.
The freezings seem to have gone but there is some performance problems with some of my games (mainly Mount & Blade) and it's made some of them virtually unplayable. Also as I said, our internet has been running slowly, at about a third to normal speed as well as just randomly stop working every now and then for hours at a time. We rang our ISP the other day and they said it's like something is constantly downloading on our computer and that's why it's running slow when we want to use it, but didn't explain why it keeps going. They've been a rather unreliable ISP but this seems like it might hold weight.

I ran a full system virus scan and at the end it a virus tool on the computer, which apparently creates malware on computers, but nothing else. I took the recommended action and got a weird result at the end.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I get the feeling from that that the action was successful but didn't actually get rid of the virus because of an error with the file being too large. This is the second time I've read this scan and done this action so I'm guessing this is why it didn't fix the problem the first time

[irishron]

http://www.microsoft.com/security/po.../Obfuscator.XZ?

http://www.sevenforums.com/system-se...scator-xz.html?

[Hrothgar Óhreinsaður]

It appears that MSE is trying to Quarantine the file, rather than outright delete it, but it's unable to do so because the file is too big. Try changing the Default actions, in the settings tab, to Remove and unchecking the box at the bottom of the Default actions screen, then scan again. If that doesn't work, try running a full scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.