Windows XP Freezes Randomly with no BSOD

[TickyBox]

My uncle brought his computer that I built for him to me saying he was having trouble with random freezing. Sometimes it would freeze after an hour, other times it would freeze after a few minutes. I had him clean both inside and out with a can of air and the thing looks immaculate. It still froze, so dust wasn't an issue. I checked all of his temperatures and voltages and they're all stable and within an acceptable temperature range. Everything else I've tried seems to have done nothing.

- Seagate Seatools found no errors
- Chkdsk found no errors
- Spybot found a registry change, but it was deleted and has found no errors since
- Both a quick and thorough scan with Malwarebytes found nothing
- Temp files and the like were cleaned with both Ccleaner and Kcleaner
- The only thing Super Anti Spyware found was a few tracking cookies
- Memtest found no errors in the RAM
- Onboard video/chipset drivers were all updated
- Several boot time scans with avast all show nothing
- Hijack This found nothing suspicious
- And I've done everything in this post verbatim. wwx.techspot.com/vb/post716873-6.html

His hard drive contains roughly 80% free space. It doesn't matter which program you have open, eventually it will freeze with having control of the mouse, till you try to close it or pull up the task manager to kill it in which everything freezes and the motherboard speaker beeps continuously at you, forcing you to hit the reset button. I've exhausted everything I can think of to figure out the problem, so any new insight into this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Route44]

Wait, what registry change? It may mean nothing but that is a red flag right there.

Re-run ChkDsk. Does Stage 2 mention anything about recovering lost files?

Also, examine the “System” and “Application” logs in Event Viewer for other recent errors that might give further clues. To do this, launch EventVwr.msc from the Run box; or open “Administrative Tools” in the Control Panel then launch Event Viewer.

Does the Device Manager have any Yellow Triangles or Red Xs?

 

[TickyBox]

The registry change said something about a redirect virus I believe. I'll have to check the SB log when I hook up the computer again.

 

[Route44]

Avast, Malwarebytes, and SuperantiSpyware are top notch products but something tells me there may be a very serious infection still present.

I strongly suggest your next move be to our Virus and Malware Removal forum, read the 8 Step sticky and follow it as given. Then post there with the required logs.

Good luck.

 

[TickyBox]

While I couldn't find the exact name of the virus SB found since it didn't log it for some reason, and chkdsk went through without any issues or saying anything but "Checking XX Stage x of x", I did find a few reoccurring things in the event viewer. Userenv - Application was still using the registry on logoff
Plug/play Manager - Timed out sending notification of target device change to window of incd.exe (It also said the same thing but with NBHGUI.exe) Both are components of Nero 7, and after I spoke to him tonight he did say that avast came up with Nero's boot.img as a decompression bomb.

I've done the virus scan as you requested and will post the results in the appropriate thread.

 

[Route44]

Make sure you follow the 8 Step sticky as given and the required logs to be attached to your post.

 

[TickyBox]

I did. The logs can be found here: xww.techspot.com/vb/topic149436.html No luck with any solution so far though.