Replaced hard drive but Ctray. exe keeps poping up

Hello all I just replaced a hard drive on my Tosheba Satellite windows 8 64 gigs 4 gigs memory  it was from another Laptop I had the drive, It is pretty new and has my windows 8 on it. My Laptop is showing that it is showing up as my c drive. But my hardware says there has been hardware changes and then a Ctray.exe pops up and says hard drive unknown. I am running updates right now.

How do I fix this issue?

Ctray.exe is potentially a malware infection, which makes me question the source of the Windows image that you used to (clean/fresh) install Windows 8 on the replacement drive. If you bought the Windows 8 media or it came supplied with your computer, you might have picked up an infection after installation. If you downloaded Windows from pirate (illegal) sources, it may highly likely be a compromised image. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/ctray.exe-20304.html

Okay the orignal hard drive is in the computer. I am uodating things now. But here is the real issue the computer freezes. This was the original issue with the Laptop. It is a Toshiba Satellite C55D-A5120 Windows 8.1 64 bit 4 gigs memory. I have tried everything a full recovery. Also I have ran anti vrus scans and have checked drives, and graphic cards.I am at my wits end. Right now I am updating it since I did a factory reset.

It freezes on both IE and firefox broswers. When I go to type it freezes and the words take forever to come on the screen. If I go to the control pannel or whatever it wants to freeze. It seems like everything I go to do it wants to take several freezing seconds to think. lol Argh it is frustrating.

Any help on that would be great

Thanks

Test your hard drive using Seatools for Windows. Do the long and short generic tests.

If it fails the test then get a new drive and install Windows 8.1. You can download it using the Media Creation Tool  If the computer came pre-installed with 8 then the computer will self activate when online as the key is embedded in Firmware.

You may need to install drivers as the install media does not have Toshiba drivers.

Edit: Fixed link

Edited by JohnC_21, 24 March 2016 - 07:33 PM.

Okay thanks I am running test now and will keep you posted. Thanks

Okay I did both tests and it said it was 100% good. So what steps do I take to fix the freezes??

If this is the original drive that was in the computer I would run one more test. Run memtest+. Do a run for a minimum of 6 passes and preferably overnight. 

Also look for any errors in Event Viewer. Does the computer freeze in Safe Mode? Try doing a clean boot. If the computer does not freeze then you will need to enable services and startup items until the computer begins freezing.

The first thing you may want to do is uninstall your Security Software and see if that helps. 

Another diagnostic tool is to use Process Explorer and see what processes are using CPU when the computer freezes.

Okay what I have done was undo the security system and it still did freeze a bit. So that was not the issue. It mostly freezes on both browsers. Yes it is the original drive that came with the computer. So which one thing should I do first? If I put it in safe mode it wont show me any anything in browsers because it will be off line. 

I would like to update to windows 10 but felt we need to fix freezing issue first.

Can you access the internet using Safe Mode with Networking?

When using Firefox use the following extensions if you do not have them. Noscript, AdblockPlus. You can substitute ublock origin for the previous two. See if you still get freezing.

The computer mostly freezing using browsers? It also freezes outside of browsing the internet, correct?

Well Hi. I switched to Google Chrome because it seemed like the foxfire in 45.1 had bug issues it kept shutting down even though I used I use Adblock Plus all the time. Google is working like a charm now. I did the clean boot and man it is speeded up now. I am not having freezing issues yea! I think we are good now.  No I am not longer dealing with freezing on the system either. However the services come back on and it does slow it down. I went in to disable start up which helps but do I have to do that every time?

I want to go ahead and upgrade to 10 what do you think should we do a few more things first?

Edited by Hisbeauty4ashes, 25 March 2016 - 06:19 PM.

The clean boot is not permanent. You need to find out what is causing the freezing. After doing clean boot start enabling your startup items a few at a time. In the clean boot instructions there are no startup items during the boot. You will need to uncheck all startup items in msconfig and start enabling them until the freezing starts. It may also be because some non-microsoft services are conflicting with each other.

Until you can find out what programs are conflicting with each other I would not update to Windows 10. The other option, while a kind of kludge, is to delete all your programs that are not absolutely necessary but you need to make sure you have all license files for the programs you uninstall.

Ok well since I did a factory reset a few days ago I hardly have any programs on here except for like CCleaner, Avast, Incredimail and or Google. So not sure that is the issue. 

Edited by Hisbeauty4ashes, 25 March 2016 - 07:13 PM.

It seems to be running smooth now though. I am not having any hang ups at all.

Edited by Hisbeauty4ashes, 25 March 2016 - 07:16 PM.

Okay, right. I forgot about the factory reset. If the computer is running fine now and you wish to upgrade to Windows 10 then give it a go. Upgrades from Windows 8/8.1 go smoother than Windows 7.

I would recommend you create a full disk image to an external drive using something like Macrium Free. This way if you do decide to revert back to 8 and it does not go well you can use the disk image to put the hard drive back to where it was before the upgrade. Macrium Free allows you to create a bootable Rescue Disk or USB flash drive. Using it and the image on the external you can recover the image. This may even be a good idea after the Windows 10 upgrade and you decide to keep it. If the file system gets corrupted or the hard drive fails using the image you would be back in business in minutes instead of hours. 

I have a question this is my friends Laptop. I made the same back up from my computer which has the same windows 8 can I use that one or do I have to do this one separate? If not can I have them both on my back up drive?