[SOLVED] Infecton/Hardware or both?

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stuch_flex

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My pc wont boot in any mode and i cant recover or reinstall windows.
It started a few months ago when i started recieving bsod's and uninstalling chrome fixed the issue when i would click on the file to reinstall chrome i would get more bsod, i recently got a few more random bsod's and today i had strange ping spikes so i checked my processes and found a few suspects, one being called start.exe. At the same time ive been recieving russian verification emails for EA.

I have Malwarebytes Pro, Spybot and windows defender with nothing major popping up. But today i installed avast pro and it wanted me to restart my pc to finalize the scan and it gave me another bsod and now i cant boot im safe, reinstall windows or recover.. all lead to a bsod.

I might be wrong but it feels like im being stopped from loading chrome and/or stopped from using virus software.
 
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Ok, so I updated from the opening 2017 to the 2018 BIOS, took me a while but figured it out with the app.
I also found somewhere that people with the errors I was getting:
0x00000124
hal.dll+47fe8
ntoskrnl.exe+463ce0
PSHED.dll+1920
they had luck with updating the BIOS.

So far so good, steam has been restarted 3/4 times, I now need to do a CPU benchmark I guess to see if it still happens?
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Ketchup79

Ketchup79

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Not really (at least based on the info in the OP and the EA link). The blue screens look to be the cause leading up to the computer not booting. Since you never found out what they were (correct me if I am wrong) the issue causing them may have finally caused your computer not to boot properly. The EA email deal is just people trying and failing to hack your EA account. If they were succeeding, you would not be getting emails, you would be locked out of your account, and you would be being charged for games you did not purchase.

The end result, however, may be the same. Since the blue screens have continued to the point that Windows no longer boots, you should at least try a fresh install (saving data) and see if that will get you back up and running.
 
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stuch_flex

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One thing i forgot to mention, when i managed to reinstall windows a while back.. afterwards i could not install chrome as it would continue to give me a bsod when i would try to reinstall it and/or delete the file.
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
Hmm.. that's generally a hardware error, and may indicate at least part of the reason for all the blue screens. Let us know how the fresh install goes.
Click to expand...
Ok, so i found my old windows 10 boot cd and managed to reinstall windows using that. To be safe i deleted all partitions. So far so good. Im going to install all my drivers ect before installing chrome and i will
Ketchup79 said:
Hmm.. that's generally a hardware error, and may indicate at least part of the reason for all the blue screens. Let us know how the fresh install goes.
Click to expand...
Ok, so i managed to do a fresh reinstall of windows from my win 10 cd, i deleted everything.
I done a couple drivers, then installed malwarebytes pro, then started the windows updates, one windows update was hanging so i decided to install bit defender while waiting, but bitdefender stopped at 92% and the windows updated stopped at 90%, this lasted for about 30 mins so i restarted the pc and went for a smoke and came back to the pc all booted nice, after putting my login details in it said "doing some windows updates" ect. Bitdefender was installed and so was the windows update. Then i noticed bitdefender was flagged on my notifications tray that it had been temporary paused, i checked my task manager and low and behold Start.exe is back. So i instantly disconnected from the wireless and have restarted im safe mode. Is this a virus? Im a little afraid to do another virus scan.

Update, even if i wanted to do a virus scan bitdefender and windows defender both say they need to restart to work.
 
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Ketchup79

Ketchup79

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I see two main hits for start.exe. Neither identify it as any type of malware. There are a couple places it has been seen. What I would recommend is that you right-click on the process and see what folder that executable is in. That might give you a better idea if it's something you installed, or something that came from nowhere.
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
I see two main hits for start.exe. Neither identify it as any type of malware. There are a couple places it has been seen. What I would recommend is that you right-click on the process and see what folder that executable is in. That might give you a better idea if it's something you installed, or something that came from nowhere.
Click to expand...
Im off to bed for now, but its located in the c/windows/systemapps folder
 
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stuch_flex

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Ok, when i first read about start.exe it got me worried. But after you mentioned about it i digged deeper and it does seem like a legit process. After restarting today my antivirus seems to be working correctly.
I installed windows to my ssd, after the install shouldnt my hdd be showing up aswell?
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
Depends. Does it show up in the BIOS? Do you hear it spinning?
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Here we go again, ive been feeling like the same stuff is happening again so i installed avast and bought a year sub, it said at the end of the scan i have 3 things that need fixing 'this pc is vulnerable to ransomware, fake programs and another i forgot', so i restarted and at the same time went into my bios.. boot option one was 'ethernet cable' and the second was my ssd, i had a quick look online and saw that i can delete the ethernet cable so i did, my hdd was not on the list. I restarted and now i have bsod again. Its funny coz the 3 things it said im open to feel lile the problems
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
What is the hard drive? If this is a second drive, disconnect it and see if Windows boots normally. It sounds like it may be dying, but need more info.
Click to expand...
Sorry if im not clear enough, i installed windows on my ssd which is showing up.
I have another 2tb hdd which i deleted and is not showing up.

The bsod message this time was Whea uncontrollable error.
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
Did you clean/wipe the SSD or just the hard drive? If you have Windows in the SSD, that's where the virus would be.
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I fully wiped everything, deleted all partitions and a fresh reinstall of windows. I was having these strange things happening on league of legends where i lose control of my character for a second but no ping or fps spikes.
 
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stuch_flex

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Ketchup79 said:
Ok. The SSD manufacturer should have a SMART and diagnostic tool for your SSD. Memtest would be a good tool to run on your RAM. That would be a good place to start.
Click to expand...
So i done one pass on the RAM and no problems, i done a diag of the ssd and no problems.

While i was talking to you last night i looked into some fixes on why avast was giving me bsod on requested reboot to fix vulnerabilities and the two things i tried came back with the same message...
"System detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application".

Is it not strange that avast said i was vulnerable to ransomware and fake programs?
 
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