Programs just stopped working

I was surfing the net with chrome. I clicked on one of the "my favorite" tabs on top. A site I go to every day, and have for many years. It wouldn't open. I tried a different site figuring that one was down. it wouldn't open. I could not go to any other website. Chrome wont launch now. nothing will. ( Microsoft edge is the only program I can run, along with Media Player) My games wont launch. Any program I try to install wont install, but my computer tells me it is, so I cant stop it and I cant delete it. I would imagine a virus but what the hell? I don't go to any porn sites at all, I don't use any torrent programs, I don't pirate any games. I have Kaspersky Total Security installed and up to date. When I restart my computer, I used to have about a dozen "hidden icons" (the little "up" arrow) in the lower right hand corner. there is now 6. WTF??? Kaspersky is running a full and complete scan but so far nothing, about an hour into it. Any ideas??? And how do I reinstall win 10 if I want. I have no disk or key. I just did the upgrade a few weeks ago. So aggravating. Something always has to go wrong.

Can you do a system restore?

Originally Posted by Nukester
Can you do a system restore?

No. It says I have no restore points. I thought that was on by default. I guess not.

If you can access a working machine, I would download MalwareBytes free version, then try to install it on the broken system in safe mode. I my experience it finds infections that many AV programs miss. The standard version is not an AV program, so it shouldn't conflict Kaspersky, but it will scan and remove infections.

It's possible to get infected from normal browsing. A website gets hacked, code is injected, and your pc is infected through the javascript or flash that runs when you visit the page. This happened to me, years ago - I was browsing happily, then a popup window appeared, blue-screened, rebooted, and I was infected. AV didn't spot a thing, but Malwarebytes removed it.

I have it installed on this machine already. Along with Spy-bot, windows defender and one other I cant remember the name of right now. Was planning to do that with mbam as soon as Kaspersky is done. Thanks for the help.

Originally Posted by Icefire
And how do I reinstall win 10 if I want.

That is as easy as clicking a button and waiting a bit. Look at Reset your PC in this page.

Note: I never tried the keep you file version, I did use the feature to do a clean install of Windows 10 and it worked well.

MBAM did find a few minor things, but it didn't change anything. My programs would work fine in safe mode though. Looks like the reset is going to be my only option. This blows. Especially since I am SO careful. I don't pirate, look for serial keys or keygens, d/l any movies or any torrents. There is only a few sites I visit regularly.

Ok. Did a reset. All seems ok so far. Now to d/l the drivers I still need and set up everything all over again. What a pain in the tookus.

I just realized I didnt save my email program. that had all my saved emails in it with ALL the links I needed to d/l games again. This really fucking blows. I am so pissed off and discouraged right now.

That is a pain in the rocks. Is your email an IMAP account? Possibly still copies on a webclient somewhere?

Always backup stuff before doing reset/clean install.

I backup everything on an external drives now…installed game included.

It is very unlikely that your email is gone, if it is any of the online versions. If you used Outlook Express, then it might be gone. All may not be lost.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Always backup stuff before doing reset/clean install.

I backup everything on an external drives now…installed game included.

I always do. I just forgot one thing.

Actually all is well. I forgot Charter saves everything on their end as well. I looked in my saved email folder. They are ALL there. But it wasnt going to be as bad as i thought anyways. A lot of my games are on steam, GOG, etc. So getting them again isnt TOO bad. I did save my text file with some links and all my serial keys. Its not as bad as i thought. Just thought it was going to really suck and got even more pissed off. But I'm up and running. Got all the drivers and my email back up and running. Wife was freaking out because we communicate through text messages during the day and she didnt hear from me. I just told her why.

I wonder if you hit a serious win 10 bug, or some newly developed malware for win10 only ? Did you get any advertisements or such when you had the problem?

If not virus/malware, only other options is it was some serious undiscovered windows 10 bug……..

This issue doesn't look like malware.

Disable windows tips.
That thing can hit the CPU hard for unknown reason and "freeze" other processes.

Another thing you could try with is creating a new user (new profile) because it might have happened that some user data were corrupted.

Since you reinstalled (I think) for drivers use DriveTheLife freeware.

I have no idea what caused it. No warnings, no error messages, nothing. I would guess a major, very rare bug in Win 10 that i just happened upon. But I have no idea how to recreate it. I really would love to know what caused it. There was a message from Kaspersky about a week before about a Trojan. Maybe it didnt actually catch it. I had to reinstall Kaspersky so the log is gone. I moved kaspersky to my non-os drive. I also used up 4 months of gaming money to purchase a 2 year sub to Anti-malware bytes. It scans on startup. Only takes a few minutes and the delay is well worth it. i can't buy any games or bundles for a while, but i think the tradeoff is worth it. The worse thing is not knowing what it was. That sucks.

And yes, Joxer. Tips was disabled. I always disable those PITA programs and notification crap.

Kaspersky was very recently (5 days ago) found to have exploitable vulnerabilities [1][2]. While its unlikely that was exploited and you were a victim, it is more probable that they pushed out updates very quickly afterwords and those may not have gotten the best testing kinda like some games.

[1] http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co…-problems.html
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10260279