Possible Virus?

Well, just a short while ago my laptop randomly shut itself off, and shortly before the screen went black there was a quick blue screen. No text on it, but got a blue screen then it shut itself off. After that, it wouldn't turn back on for a good 15 minutes. When it finally did start back up, it took another 5 minutes just to turn on.

After turning back on, I went straight to windows firewall and defender. I know they're not the best and all, but yeah. Anyway, upon trying to get into them or change the settings for them, I get errors.

For windows firewall, I get an error that says "Due to an unidentified problem, Windows cannot display Windows Firewall settings."
For windows defender, I get an error that says "Application failed to initialize: 0x80070006. The handle is invalid."
I also get another error when trying to turn on the security center which says "The Security Center service can't be started."

I'm guessing this is a virus of some sort, but up until this problem I've had absolutely no problems with my laptop, so it's worrying.

Help, please?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FoolsLove

Well, just a short while ago my laptop randomly shut itself off, and shortly before the screen went black there was a quick blue screen. No text on it, but got a blue screen then it shut itself off. After that, it wouldn't turn back on for a good 15 minutes. When it finally did start back up, it took another 5 minutes just to turn on.

After turning back on, I went straight to windows firewall and defender. I know they're not the best and all, but yeah. Anyway, upon trying to get into them or change the settings for them, I get errors.

For windows firewall, I get an error that says "Due to an unidentified problem, Windows cannot display Windows Firewall settings."
For windows defender, I get an error that says "Application failed to initialize: 0x80070006. The handle is invalid."
I also get another error when trying to turn on the security center which says "The Security Center service can't be started."

I'm guessing this is a virus of some sort, but up until this problem I've had absolutely no problems with my laptop, so it's worrying.

Help, please?

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Could be a heat issue, does it get very warm?

Also try running this: http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed/

It can tell you what was responsible for the blue screen. Then post it back here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by XTOTHEL

Could be a heat issue, does it get very warm?

Also try running this: http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed/

It can tell you what was responsible for the blue screen. Then post it back here.

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The AC adapter gets hot (it's a Dell), but other than that the laptop itself doesn't get warm unless I've got it on for days at a time, which I don't do since my last adapter broke.

Downloaded whocrashed, and no result came up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FoolsLove

The AC adapter gets hot (it's a Dell), but other than that the laptop itself doesn't get warm unless I've got it on for days at a time, which I don't do since my last adapter broke.

Downloaded whocrashed, and no result came up.

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That's weird, are crash dumps enabled for your computer?

Also you can try running Spybot and see if it pics up anything: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Also you can post a hijackthis log and post it back here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/

Virus scan with your antivirus(unless you're only using defender), make sure the definitions are up to date.

If you don't have one, you can try AVG free here: http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage or Avast: http://www.avast.com/en-us/index

Quote:

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Originally Posted by XTOTHEL

That's weird, are crash dumps enabled for your computer?

Also you can try running Spybot and see if it pics up anything: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Also you can post a hijackthis log and post it back here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/

Virus scan with your antivirus(unless you're only using defender), make sure the definitions are up to date.

If you don't have one, you can try AVG free here: http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage or Avast: http://www.avast.com/en-us/index

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Yeah it's enabled.

Well, Spybot picked up quite a bit and removed that, but I've still got the errors when trying to access Windows Firewall/Defender/Security Center.

I typically avoid antivirus software because I've never had a really good history with them. Guess I might have to though.

Alrighty, well something is still wrong.

Running CCleaner, SpyBot and Avast several times seems to have helped somewhat but it hasn't completely solved my problems.

Every so often avast! pops up saying it's caught some random trojan horse that's in the windows system32 folder. Also, every time I search for something no matter what search engine, one of two things happen. After clicking a link that comes up from the search, either nothing will happen, the page won't change, and another avast! popup will come saying it caught something from Firefox, or the page will change, but it will bring me to some random advertisement page.

I also still get the same errors for Window Firewall, Windows Defender, and Security Center.