My PC is slowly dying in front of me and I don't know why

Solution
What you're doing now is like trying to fix a broken leg with band-aids. It "came to" a clean install days ago, you're just prolonging your misery at this point.
HDD temperature was checked and is fine, and I just installed a water cooler that had my CPU temp around 20-30 Celsius at idle. I have to go to work right now but will check the CPU temperature again when I return. In the past, if my CPU has ever overheated it always shuts the computer down whereas now it will just stay on in this stuttering state
 
Thanks for your response - do you mean to do a fresh install of Windows? I'll have to do what I can to back up what I haven't already before I attempt that. I have a slower HDD that I use purely for storage; I will attempt to figure out how to boot windows from that.

Also, if it is helpful to know: The computer works fine in Safe Mode. When I do a normal boot, however, it is pretty much inoperable for all intents and purposes. I couldn't even manually shut down the computer down once it had started, the mouse movement was so unpredictable
 
Surprise surprise, I tried to force a system restore and found NO system restore points. This was definitely suspicious because I have 10GB available for system restore. I did a Malwarebytes scan IN SAFE MODE and it found 2 trojans. I quarantined them, but my computer is still a wreck in normal-mode.

Going to keep scanning with other programs because now I'm paranoid... but it might come to a windows clean install
 
dont you have an usb stick thats big enough to install windows on it? you could just boot from that. hell you could even install ubuntu or knoppix on a DVD and boot froma dvd. you just need to check if your OS is corrupted or not. malware scanning is as useless as a mans nipples. try to minimize the damage.
 
Sorry for my delayed response - you were both very right. The computer was gone regardless of removing the culprits. I went and purchased a proper 32 GB usb and booted from it, reinstalling Windows 7.

The computer functions normally now, but I have one more question before I'll mark as solved: it says my C: hard drive still has 1TB of data on it(same as before I re-installed windows), but I'm unable to find any of the files. Are those files retrievable in any way shape or form, or should i just format the C: drive to wipe whatever this "data" is?
 


did you installed a new version of windows? like going from 7 to 10? there could be implementation problems. To be honest though, i wouldnt recommend to keep that hard drive in your new system without formatting. if it was malware, it could corrupt your new OS as well. i'd go for a reset unless there's important data you want to save.

http://www.disk-partition.com/windows-10/windows-10-disk-management-0528.html

check out this link. that should solve your problem.