So my PC was running fine ever since I got it (purchased new August ish of 2021 off Newegg, it's an ABS prebuilt). Around March of this year a lot of my accounts were hacked. Long story short I downloaded a mod for a PC game (WWE 2k24). The mod author was trustworthy, but the site that the download was hosted on was not. I had a popup while I was on there, downloaded the wrong file that was not the mod at all, and this file is what infected my PC. Evidently something harvested my browser data and that's how all my accounts got hacked. I bought antivirus and it removed the culprit but I read mixed things that it might still be in the RAM or something somewhere else so the only way to be sure was to do a clean Windows reinstall.
I did that by using an old 2012 PC to download a clean copy of Windows 10 from MS website, I scanned my backup USB drive with antivirus, backed up all my important files and scanned them again, then disconnected the drive. I then did a clean install and completely formatted all internal drives. I set up everything on my PC again including GPU drivers but noticed that Windows was somewhat slower. The main difference was startup speed. Before reinstall, even though I was technically infected with whatever virus my PC had, it started up instantly and I was at the desktop in under 20 seconds. After the reinstall of Windows it was significantly longer. Things were slower in general after everything got going, but not really noticeable too much as all I was doing was browsing for a while. Then after a while I tried playing Ark Survival Ascended and things were REALLY slow and the game was unplayable. It also seemed to kill my PC momentarily. Even after closing the game just navigating Windows and my web browsers was super slow.
After some google searches I came upon the following thread on this forum:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/pc-slow-after-clean-install.3759482/
The solution seemed to work, and I disabled whatever setting is equivalent to Intel Adaptive Thermal Monitor on my own motherboard (Asus Prime Z490-P). Ark SA was playable and ran well and startup seemed faster although still not what it was before.
Things have gradually gotten slower into the present though. Startup is slow again, and I'm playing WWE 2k24 and while it runs well in game, downloading anything from Community Creations in game takes forever as well as navigating the menus. I own the game on Xbox as well and I can download the same character at the same time and on Xbox it's maybe 5 seconds max and on my PC some of them take 20-30 seconds. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Oh and I tried Ark SA again last week and it had a graphical glitch that made it unplayable. Half the screen was covered by a field of something, and I would move and it would become transparent but flicker between transparent and solid as my character was walking. After that I checked GPU drivers and there was an update there which I did, but I haven't tried playing Ark again since.
Another issue that happened was yesterday. I setup a new monitor and accidentally unplugged my PC while shifting things around. I got the new monitor hooked up and connected to my PC but when I turned my PC on the monitor wasn't picking up a signal from it. This had happened before (before the virus or any problems had emerged) with my old monitor and back then I just held down the power button to turn the PC off, left it off for 10 seconds, then turned it on and the display was back. So I tried that yesterday and the monitor still didn't pick up a signal. Then while I was waiting and connecting a new cable (I was trying to use Displayport and had been using HDMI) the PC just shut itself off. Finally after turning it back on and connected via HDMI the screen came on but as is usual now it was slow to boot up to desktop. I left the Displayport cable connected and switched to that input later on and lo and behold it was recognized, so I disconnected HDMI that's what I'm using now. There was also a brief period where audio wasn't going through to my speakers, but I connected them to the monitor and I was getting sound that way, then connected them back directly to the PC and they worked.
So just a lot of weird issues popping up. Not sure if they're all related or not, but the biggest issue is boot up speed and performance in game. I'm not really sure what to do at this point or what the problem is. I don't think the virus was the problem as my PC was working fine even with the virus, I think it was just data harvesting malware. The problems all started after I reinstalled Windows.
For reference, my specs are:
Windows 10 Home
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z490-P
CPU: Intel i7 10700K
GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 3070
RAM: 32 GB
Hard Drives (Not sure these numbers will mean anything to anyone but it's the only identifying info that comes up when I search to find what exactly they are:
- WDC WD10EZEX-00WN4A0 1 TB internal SSD (main drive that windows is installed on)
- KINGSTON SUV400S37240G 240 GB internal SSE (drive I took out of previous PC, only used for extra storage and no system applications)
- INTEL SSDPEKNW010T8 1 TB internal HDD
- ST5000DM000-1FK178 Seagate backup drive 5 TB External USB HDD
I also saved the link to the exact PC, it's right here (I upgraded the RAM and put in the extra hard drives immediately when I got it):
https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali454/p/N82E16883360038
I did that by using an old 2012 PC to download a clean copy of Windows 10 from MS website, I scanned my backup USB drive with antivirus, backed up all my important files and scanned them again, then disconnected the drive. I then did a clean install and completely formatted all internal drives. I set up everything on my PC again including GPU drivers but noticed that Windows was somewhat slower. The main difference was startup speed. Before reinstall, even though I was technically infected with whatever virus my PC had, it started up instantly and I was at the desktop in under 20 seconds. After the reinstall of Windows it was significantly longer. Things were slower in general after everything got going, but not really noticeable too much as all I was doing was browsing for a while. Then after a while I tried playing Ark Survival Ascended and things were REALLY slow and the game was unplayable. It also seemed to kill my PC momentarily. Even after closing the game just navigating Windows and my web browsers was super slow.
After some google searches I came upon the following thread on this forum:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/pc-slow-after-clean-install.3759482/
The solution seemed to work, and I disabled whatever setting is equivalent to Intel Adaptive Thermal Monitor on my own motherboard (Asus Prime Z490-P). Ark SA was playable and ran well and startup seemed faster although still not what it was before.
Things have gradually gotten slower into the present though. Startup is slow again, and I'm playing WWE 2k24 and while it runs well in game, downloading anything from Community Creations in game takes forever as well as navigating the menus. I own the game on Xbox as well and I can download the same character at the same time and on Xbox it's maybe 5 seconds max and on my PC some of them take 20-30 seconds. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Oh and I tried Ark SA again last week and it had a graphical glitch that made it unplayable. Half the screen was covered by a field of something, and I would move and it would become transparent but flicker between transparent and solid as my character was walking. After that I checked GPU drivers and there was an update there which I did, but I haven't tried playing Ark again since.
Another issue that happened was yesterday. I setup a new monitor and accidentally unplugged my PC while shifting things around. I got the new monitor hooked up and connected to my PC but when I turned my PC on the monitor wasn't picking up a signal from it. This had happened before (before the virus or any problems had emerged) with my old monitor and back then I just held down the power button to turn the PC off, left it off for 10 seconds, then turned it on and the display was back. So I tried that yesterday and the monitor still didn't pick up a signal. Then while I was waiting and connecting a new cable (I was trying to use Displayport and had been using HDMI) the PC just shut itself off. Finally after turning it back on and connected via HDMI the screen came on but as is usual now it was slow to boot up to desktop. I left the Displayport cable connected and switched to that input later on and lo and behold it was recognized, so I disconnected HDMI that's what I'm using now. There was also a brief period where audio wasn't going through to my speakers, but I connected them to the monitor and I was getting sound that way, then connected them back directly to the PC and they worked.
So just a lot of weird issues popping up. Not sure if they're all related or not, but the biggest issue is boot up speed and performance in game. I'm not really sure what to do at this point or what the problem is. I don't think the virus was the problem as my PC was working fine even with the virus, I think it was just data harvesting malware. The problems all started after I reinstalled Windows.
For reference, my specs are:
Windows 10 Home
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z490-P
CPU: Intel i7 10700K
GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 3070
RAM: 32 GB
Hard Drives (Not sure these numbers will mean anything to anyone but it's the only identifying info that comes up when I search to find what exactly they are:
- WDC WD10EZEX-00WN4A0 1 TB internal SSD (main drive that windows is installed on)
- KINGSTON SUV400S37240G 240 GB internal SSE (drive I took out of previous PC, only used for extra storage and no system applications)
- INTEL SSDPEKNW010T8 1 TB internal HDD
- ST5000DM000-1FK178 Seagate backup drive 5 TB External USB HDD
I also saved the link to the exact PC, it's right here (I upgraded the RAM and put in the extra hard drives immediately when I got it):
https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali454/p/N82E16883360038
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