I need help with my computer, it's been failing on me and my e-mail has been compromised? (URGENT)?

Question

Okay, so it all started while I was rendering a video on after effects. It crashed half way through and then when I tried to restart it froze after I reached the desktop with all the icons etc. I rebooted again a couple of times and still the same thing. I booted in safe mode and it went fine, I used a startup manager to turn of all the startup programs and rebooted in regular mode. It all booted fine, and I turned back on the startup programs I had before apart from one new one which belonged to adobe, which I left off. Then after rebooting again everything was fine. Or, so I thought.
Since having the computer up and running again, it's been freezing quite a bit, randomly. I could be doing nothing, it's not crashing because of failing memory or anything.
I went to my email tonight and found about 15 failure notices from emails I haven't sent.
Then, I went to my spam and there are about 50 failure notices.
My sent box revealed that spammy mail has been sent from my account without me knowing to addresses that I don't have in my contact list.
It's about some delivery, lottery rubbish. It changed my email 'sent name' to MR MIKE UBA.
I've changed my password and run a virus scan which found nothing. I REALLY need some ideas as to what to do now.. HELP PLEASE.

Answer 1

How do you know it is not from failing memory? Did you run a memory test?



Some things to check for the freezing:



1) burst, or bulging capacitors (check link for pictures)- http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 - while you're in there, check for dust clogged areas and blow them out with canned air, especially the HSF. Heat can often cause random freezing issues.



2) download and burn an ISO for Memtest86+ at http://www.memtest.org/#downiso - Boot to this CD to test your RAM (red means failing memory)



3) download and burn an ISO for DFT at http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT - Boot to this CD and test your hard drive (choose ATA only to boot w/o loading SCSI drivers) - user guide here: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/Dft32_User_Guide_415.pdf



4) not likely, but PSU issues can be weird like this, too. Test yours with a tester, if you've got one or can borrow one. Otherwise, buy a new one and swap it out to see if this resolves the issue. If not, return it.





As for the security issues, you've already changed your password. Did you also change your security questions? If not, I would change your password again and also change all your security questions.

Answer 2

Ok,



For the email. I take it your using a web client based email (hotmail, gmail etc.). In this case the sollution is often just to change your password. In most cases, that will solve the problem...



As for your computer, it's hard to run a diagnosis from here. In particular since the symptoms could lead to thousands of things.

So, first of all, some good advice. Since I don't know what it going on, I'd make a back-up of important files while you still can.

Also, why dont you scan your computer with your antivirus (make sure it's up-to-date). AVG is a free one that always keeps itself up-to-date and gets rid of pretty much everything while being light-weight on your computer.

If that didn't do it, go check your task manager and go over to the "processes" tab. See if there is anything that consumes too much memory.

If that doesn't help, have your computer diagnosed at a shop or service. They can run trouble shooters on your CPU or find a possible program responsible.



Like I said, hard to help from here, but it sounds like a virus. But as for the email problem; change your password. Thats all you need to do...

Answer 3

You have a Virus. Notify your E-mail provider for assistance on the E-mail being compromised. Whereas to get rid of the Virus try using Avast! Demo or something, it worked for me when I had a Virus.

Answer 4

my rec, shut down the problem system. find a clean system down load AV, and malwarebytes. burn to CD/DVD



boot problem in safe mode, install and run malwarebytes and AV in Safe mode, re-run until scans are clean, boot in safe with network, rescan again until logs show clean. then again in normal



Best option would be to back up data files 1st,



run rootkit scanner (malwarebytes has a product)