windows is unresponsive but works well in safe mode

I was installing a few utility apps and things when my laptop running windows 7 stopped responding. I tried to reboot and still very unresponsive... the mouse moves but i am unable to click on icons or open the start menu. eventually things catch up after over a minute.

when i start in safe mode with networking support i am able to operate the laptop at lightening speed and web browsing is a dream.

I ran msconfig and shut off all non windows services and still get the same thing. after no results i then got and ran spybot, malwarebytes, and other such tools but got no results. they all show nothing wrong.

now what?

kacalapy

Posted 2012-10-10T01:47:08.987

Reputation: 525

Did you uninstall the utility apps which you was trying to install and this problem starts? Did you also try any restore point where you system was working good. – avirk – 2012-10-10T02:50:41.807

download AutoRuns and see what is running on startup (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx). Like avirk said, try restoring to an earlier point and uninstall those utilities

– Logman – 2012-10-10T02:59:09.043

Answers

Perform "Clean Boot" as MS atricle suggests so only crucial system services will load, and everything else is disabled.

Machine may become unresponsive in case more than 1 anti-virus/-malware/-spyware tries to perform scanning.

If everything runs smoothly in "Clean Boot", then enable startup items on startup tab of msconfig one at a time, to find the culprit.

This is definitely one of the items in the startup list.

Volodymyr M.

Posted 2012-10-10T01:47:08.987

Reputation: 1 428

Sounds like one of those utilities possibly installed a driver or a service that is running on startup. I would recommend Uninstalling all of those recently installed programs, and install 1 at a time until it breaks again. Once that happens, go back to safe mode, uninstall it, and exclude it from future installs.

user76211

Posted 2012-10-10T01:47:08.987

Reputation:

Install Process Explorer from Microsoft, then use it to see if some app/function is burning up all your CPU.

Daniel R Hicks

Posted 2012-10-10T01:47:08.987

Reputation: 5 783