Laptop problems

[MobileTechie]

I had an Asus laptop in with reported virus problems - progressive popups, freezing etc. When I got it it would not boot, giving 0x7E on normal boot and and 0X50 errors on safe mode boot. I did an offline sfc check which flagged up and changed atapi.sys and it booted and I found a series of trojans and rootkits on it which I removed. I then did an online sfc and it required the install disk to complete so I assume it replaced a few files.

It appeared to be OK but it started to lock up which starts off as the touchpad/pointer becoming jerky and then freezing. At that point I have to pull the battery to turn it off. However safe mode is fine. There appear to be some problems with services loading which are in a chain of dependency. However the root of the dependency actually starts fine. I've done every combination of msconfig boot available and even the strictest startup (no startups, almost no services etc) does not allow normal boot without the eventual freeze.

A repair install stalled during driver installation, again requiring a power off to reset. It completed the second time but the symptoms are exactly the same: boots up, the mouse becomes jerky soon after it appears, a few apps even start up and then the freeze.

I have already checked out the disk and memory.

Any suggestions?

[XFalloutX]

Have you updated all the drivers? Specially for the touchpad. Try disabling the touchpad and using a USB mouse and see if it still locks up. I had a laptop like that and the touchpad was bad on it

[rkenig]

I agree with xfalloutx. It sounds like a driver problem.

[NYJimbo]

If you can watch the processes in taskmanager before the freeze you might spot it. We had a problem with a machine doing this when it was loading ATI catalyst crap.

Another machine we had still had a virus we didnt detect but it was doing something a minute or two after booting. Once we found the virus the late freeze stopped.

You could still be infected with something. If msconfig didnt help and you dont see any real drivers or services worth noting I would go back in with gmer, mbam, etc.. and just give it a full sweep. A repair install isnt going to get rid of that nasty stuff and often will not fix things you expect it to.

[xxenon]

Check the event log. Install process monitor in safe mode, start it right after booting, check it's log after crash.
Also, try installing WhoCrashed from resplendence.com.
You'll need windbg to use it.

[MobileTechie]

Thanks for the suggestions so far

It's got more confusing now. I checked all of the above and more and nothing consistent showed up. The customer doesn't care about the data so I wiped (in case of MBR virus) and reinstalled Windows.

It still does it. But the odd thing is that it does it every other boot. So one boot goes fine and the laptop works perfectly. Then the next boot, and it could be 5 seconds or 5 hours later, it doesn't work. When it freezes it freezes just after the desktop shows up and the laptop becomes entirely unresponsive. I have to pull the battery just to turn it off. Then I can immediately reboot it and it works just fine.

[MobileTechie]

So any ideas what would cause a freeze on a fresh installation every other boot?

[Graystar]

I would use UBCD or a live disk to confirm that it is not hardware related, (loose connector on touchpad or temperature related etc..)

[MobileTechie]

It works fine in safe mode or with a linux boot disk I've tried.

[bagellad]

did you transfer the drivers from the infected windows? might have brought a root kit over