BleepingComputer.com: Mystery Problem (I'm sorry!)

I wish I could explain exactly what kind of problem I'm having, but, despite having used PCs since the age of 7 (nearly 21 years!), I am utterly baffled.

A few nights ago, Windows Vista wanted to update. I let it. I should be using Vista with SP2 at this point (unless I was hallucinating).

Everything seemed to run just fine.

Last night, I came to my computer to see it was locked oddly on the desktop. I thought whatever and rebooted.

As soon as I came back, I noticed it would perform very slowly. For instance, it would just sit there, and as far as I could tell, everything in memory worked fine (like if I was playing a video, it would keep playing), but as soon as I did something that needed the HDD, it would hang. Then, wham, it would come back, the HDD would access like crazy, and things would work for a little while. Then it would do it again (like opening a program, that kind of thing).

I panicked and thought now would be a good time for a system backup. Backup told me it could not complete, however.

I've since done a SpyBot scan, a HiJackthis scan, tried disabling startup items... I am now booted in Safe Mode and am running Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. However, it is seemingly to "hang" at the same point in Safe Mode as it did in normal mode. It scans about 67000 items, finds 5 infected objects, but before it can finish, it "hangs" while scanning "C:\Users\Jesse\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\7.0\Updater\udlog.txt" In fact, it's been sitting here for a few minutes. I'm going to leave it a while and hope it comes back, but I'm alarmed that it did this in both safe mode and normal mode. Another symptom, or could this possibly be the problem?

Is this a HDD problem? That was my first thought. Is it my motherboard crapping out? Is it a virus or malware?

I'm lost. I don't want to buy a new computer, and I don't particularly want to take it in, either, but I'm going to have to do something. I'm desperate and hope hope hoping that you guys can help me. :(

At this point, I seem to be locked up even in safe mode. :( And it's so odd that it would be at the same place as it occurred in normal mode, the aforementioned file.

Ah, but now it has resumed. So strange... I hope it's able to finish the scan. I'd like to remove the 5 infected objects it's found at least.

I'm sorry for not providing very good info. Please tell me what else I could provide. Also, if I've posted this in the wrong area, please let me know!

Please help me... :( :( :( :(

Well, even after the scan, and removing 11 infected objects, it's still the same problems. I've scheduled a disk scan and am rebooting my computer. If it's not my hard drive failing, then I don't know what else it could possibly be. I'm just going to have to take my PC in to get fixed I guess.

could be a rootkit.post your mbam logs in am i infected forum

I don't know what that is, but I'm very interested! How can I check and/or fix it?

malwarebytes removed 11 items.it will produce a log.the am i infected forum has proffesional help available.post the log there with your problem description

Ah, okay, now I understand, sorry! I will do that. Thanks very much! As soon as this chkdsk finishes I'll hunt up the log and post it. I remember looking through it and didn't see much, but I'm not well-versed in such things either. Thanks again.

Here's a dumb question. Where is the log file? I've looked everywhere, but I don't know what the file name is. Sorry! I may just have to run it again to get the log.

open malwarebytes and click on logs at the top

Ah, thanks! That was not hard. Sorry!