Tony Bensley
Senior HTF Member
Thanks for the tip, Clint! I may try that if this current session bogs down into more "not responding" crap, but so far, it's been OK. Regarding Malwarebytes, I hadn't realized that any custom mode setting, even only tweaked by specific Hard Drive selection (I thought this was necessary to avoid even lengthier secondary hard drive scanning!) would automatically result in interminably long scanning sessions, which I still find ridiculous, as I don't recall pre 2014 versions being set up that way, but never mind!Tony - Just a thought... I know you have been running Malwarebytes scans (that is the best anti-malware program you can get, btw) and AVG antivirus scans and they have found and removed infections. I am assuming you have been doing this in normal Windows user mode.
Have you tried restarting your laptop in safe mode (you don't need to select the command prompt or networking options, the regular safe mode is good) and then running full Malwarebytes and AVG scans? If you are battling a nasty bit of malware or a virus, they can often times not be fully removed unless you are in safe mode which only loads the drivers necessary for Windows to function on a base level.
On the plus side, this morning's opening of Firefox and Google Chrome didn't start with non responsive Icon clicking and for the first time in quite awhile, I wasn't greeted with Firefox's annoying "Well, This Is Embarrassing" message that has accompanied previous restore previous session fails!
CHEERS!