Question Malvertising warning and computer freeze

PCDevil

Prominent
Aug 9, 2021
6
0
510
Hi

Yesterday I clicked on a seemingly fine looking website and my anti-virus came up with a message saying it had blocked it due to malvertising. I closed the tab as soon as the anti-virus message popped up. I didn’t click anything on the webpage, the site hadn’t even fully loaded.

I ran scans on my anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware programs and they have said all clear, no issues.

I then cleared browser history/cache/cookies.

This morning I did have quite a few tabs open and it was fine for a while, then my browser suddenly closed. I re-opened it, restored the tabs and it was alright for a short while. It then went slow. I switched to another browser and that was really slow, then my computer froze.

Ctrl+alt+delete didn’t do anything and I ended up pressing the power button on my desktop.

I restarted my desktop and I have left my Internet off for now, but my desktop seems to be running smooth and as fast as normal again at the moment.

Looking at task manager, it is showing seemingly high RAM use (3.3GB, 328mb compressed, 4.5GB available and nothing open but the task manager), but then I noticed ages ago that seemed high and my laptop shows similar (5.1GB, 263mb compressed, 2.7GB available and just Word and a browser with 2 tabs running).

The CPU is mostly flickering between 1% and 3%, hard drives are 0% mostly. One occasionally flickers up a few percent.

I can’t see anything obviously suspicious running, but Windows does have many background things that run and I don’t know what they all are.

My desktop is a few years old, probably not as fast as it was, and clearing browser history can make pages slower and more tabs open slows things down (although that doesn’t explain my other browser having issues).

Is the freezing likely due to malware or just a coincidence?

Is there anything else I can do to check for malware?

Thanks.
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Task Manager - good. Also use Resource Monitor. Be sure to run both tools as Admin and run only one tool at a time.

= = = =

My thought is that the somewhere along the way one or more files became corrupted.

Most likely when you were forced to use the power button to shutdown.

Take a look in Reliability History for any related error codes, warnings, or even informational events just before or at the time of the freeze. Or thereafter....

Then try "sfc /scannonw" and "dism" to find and, if necessary, fix any corrupted Windows files.

References:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

How to use DISM command tool to repair Windows 10 image | Windows Central

And considering that all could have been worse - think about your backup and recovery plans. Is your data safe?
 
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PCDevil

Prominent
Aug 9, 2021
6
0
510
Task Manager - good. Also use Resource Monitor. Be sure to run both tools as Admin and run only one tool at a time.

= = = =

My thought is that the somewhere along the way one or more files became corrupted.

Most likely when you were forced to use the power button to shutdown.

Take a look in Reliability History for any related error codes, warnings, or even informational events just before or at the time of the freeze. Or thereafter....

Then try "sfc /scannonw" and "dism" to find and, if necessary, fix any corrupted Windows files.

References:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

How to use DISM command tool to repair Windows 10 image | Windows Central

And considering that all could have been worse - think about your backup and recovery plans. Is your data safe?

Thanks for replying.

I will have a closer look at task manager and resource monitor, it's just time consuming going through every item and checking it's legit.

My Internet was fine before yesterday. Office and Adobe programs have been slow to start up recently, but I just opened an Adobe program and it opened up fast, no issues. It's quite possible a file is corrupt. Thanks for the information, I'll check that.

I have most of my data backed up. It's also on a separate drive to Windows/program installations so would hopefully be fine even if I have a corrupt Windows file.