How can I fix a computer that is literally too slow to do anything?

Posted by fredley on Super User See other posts from Super User or by fredley
Published on 2012-11-26T22:04:22Z Indexed on 2012/11/26 23:10 UTC
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windows-7

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malware

I'm troubleshooting a Windows 7 PC for a friend. A couple of days ago it started running 'slow'. It turns out 'slow' is about 15 minutes to the first glimpse of the desktop, and another 30 to show icons. It is possible to open Task Manager, and nothing seems awry, CPU usage at 1-5%, plenty of memory free.

The machine is clearly infested with malware though, in particular a program called 'Optimizer Pro' is demanding money to 'remove 5102 files slowing down my computer'. This seems highly suspicious.

My problem is though, that I can't access msconfig (I left it for a couple of hours after having hopefully typed it into the Start Menu and hit enter - nothing seems to have loaded), or anything at all basically. I can boot from a Linux Live CD, but can I actually do anything useful from there?

System Restore hasn't fixed it either, and Safe Mode exhibits the same behavior.

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