BleepingComputer.com: Suddenly unusably slow laptop. No viruses or spyware.

Hello. First of all, I am new here and this is my first post so please have patience with me

This morning I used my laptop (Compaq Presario CQ60 Notebook, Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2, 32-bit) and shut it down and packed it up as I have for the past year. Two hours later I boot it up again and it was tremendously slow after log in(It took 5 minutes to bring up task manager which stated that only 3%-7% CPU was being used). I reset it, and it did the same thing. I then booted it in safe mode and ran a complete virus and spyware check with Avast! and Spybot Search & Destroy. They both came up empty. I am currently using the same computer and it works at full speed while in safe mode, but not when I boot it up regularly.

If anyone could help it would be much appreciated!

Hi,
Have you had a look at what's running at startup by using msconfig? Guide with screenshots http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/index.html.

Don't make changes if you're unsure, ask here.

Hope this helps?

Richard

Ok, I am checking out the guide now.
Will post when done.
(Thanks for the quick reply)

Hmmm... I did find a "DSSAGENT.EXE" that was marked as bad on the site. How do I remove it?

I did some more investigation and found that the target malicious exe does not exist. The folder is empty and there are no traces in the registry. I will uncheck "DSS" from the start up and try booting it normally.

Nope. It was still as slow as before. I can't even do a graceful shutdown and have to end up hard powering it off while it is still running (I feel bad, but it won't shut down within 15 mins).

Back in safe mode again.

I checked into the "DSS" problem and it looks like only the shell of a previously solved problem. The target folder is empty and all the places where instances should show up in the registry are clean. I'm guessing this was something Spybot Search & Destroy found and deleted before.

I'm out of leads now