what is wrong with my computer??? please help!

everything was running fine yesterday afternoon, got up this morning and everything was slow and slower and eventually locked up. restarted, super slow....nothing was responding....would open a program(or attempt to by double clicking) and nothing would happen, the computer would think then stop. sometimes it would open after a few seconds, then sometimes after a few minutes, but eventually would stop responding. ran Norton and it locked up during a full scan and everything locked up again shortly after. tried a system recovery and nothing, ran malwarebytes (free trial) and everyting worked great for like 10 minutes, then the same issues as before started happening after i ran norton again. super confused and super frustrated. any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

The first thing I can suggest is to download and run the free version of speccy http://www.piriform.com/speccy/download so we can see if it may be a heat issue. Otherwise we need more information about your computer and anything that you may have done recently.

 

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Pentium E5400 @ 2.70GHz49 °C
Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Single-Channel DDR2 @ 333MHz (5-4-4-14)
Motherboard
eMachines EMCP73VT-PM (CPU 1)41 °C
Graphics
E19T6W (1440x900@60Hz)
256MB GeForce 7050 / nForce 620i (Acer Incorporated [ALI])
Hard Drives
699GB Seagate ST375052 8AS SCSI Disk Device (ATA)
Optical Drives
ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH41N SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

 

have done nothing out of the ordinary on computer in a while. The only thing is the wife "unsafely" removed an external hard drive at some point in the last 24 hours. uninstalled norton, installed avg and spybot and ran scans, found nothing on avg, spybot found several threats and removed, still running funny, jerky, slow, and threatening to lock up. it gets to running smooth, and then i restart and it takes ten to 20 minutes to get back to being able to use anything.

 

Have you installed speccy yet. Let it run for a while and post a screenshot.

 

posted above, is what it said after running, just copied and pasted

 

I'd suggest if possible running the defragment tool, just go to the Start bar and type in the search box Disk Defragmenter.
I would also suggest running the disk cleanup utility as well, right click on C: drive select Properties and then Disk Cleanup, make sure you check all the boxes as this will clean out all old temporary files.

How much free space does your HDD currently have? Anything below 10% of your HDD space (70GB in your case) can sometimes slow the computer down

Also it looks like your RAM is single channel (so might only be 1 RAM stick), if it is 2x2GB sticks try taking one out running the computer and then put that one back in and take the other RAM stick out.

 

Just to clarify, your computer issue is that recently it has slowed down incredibly and will freeze at some point? If so, can you post the following information:
1. What anti-virus software are you running
2. How old is the computer
3. If you know, what kind of hard drive is the operating system on (size and if it is mechanical/solid state/hybrid)

 

Hi
Regarding slow Boot Up .....is "Boot Time Protection" enabled in Norton
click here
If so - try disabling this and see if the Boot time improves.

Once you have booted up - can you disable Norton ( don't use the internet ) and see if things improve.
Right click on the Norton Icon bottom right.
"Disable" should be an option.

Obviously enable Norton again after testing.