Hey all,

This is my first post, so bear with me if I make some newbie mistakes. I usually solve my own problems, but this one's got me stumped, and honestly, don't we all just want to get back to work? :) So maybe you can help me out...

I see lots of people submitting HijackThis reports when they have similar problems, so I'm attaching one.

A bit of background info on this problem...

This started when I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Prior to this, I had Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, which was clean-installed. I used the upgrade procedure from Windows 7 to upgrade, and it went pretty well. This problem did not begin occurring immediately; it's rather recent. I would say that it started approximately 30-60 days ago, so it may have been either from a Windows update or a program I installed within that time. One in particular that I can think of is CrashPlan, so if anyone knows if that causes such a problem, let me know. I also run a virtual machine on this laptop...strangely, the virtual machine keeps running without a problem even when I can't open other programs, or open them properly. However, closing it down doesn't resolve the issue.

There are several things that may happen when my computer gets into this state:

1. Programs do not open. For example, if I try to open Process Explorer (with which I replaced my Task Manager), it simply does not open. The computer does not freeze, but the program does not open.
2. Sometimes a Web browser will open and then immediately freeze.
3. Today I had the QuickTime installer freeze about 75% through the installation. When I clicked Stop, it didn't stop, and I couldn't force-close it due to not being able to open Process Explorer...
4. Other times, a Web Browser will open and be unable to load pages. NOTE: I do not receive a page not found error. The progress indicator simply cycles forever, and the page does not load. I can observe this in Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome (latest), and I think Firefox 3.6 (latest or second-latest). Firefox was freezing the latest time, though.

As mentioned in the title, a reboot fixes this every time. I haven't measured specifically, but it tends to take 2-3 days before I need to reboot again. Oh, sometimes I have to reboot because the CPU starts pegging at 100% with no way to stop it. I think that these two issues are related.

What this seems to indicate to me is that these programs are waiting for a response from some system process, which isn't giving it. One time, when nosing around in Process Explorer, I noticed the WMI Provider Service consuming a lot of CPU and that it was waiting for...something. I didn't have time to debug it with kernel dumps and stuff, and don't really have much experience with it...but I just mention it since maybe it's a similar thing here.

So I'm wondering...what should I do to debug/troubleshoot this issue effectively? I don't really want to do a system restore, and I don't want to clean-install the OS. This upgrade to Windows 7 actually started out really nicely...and if I could solve this issue, it'd be fine. I've bought more RAM to max it out, but somehow I don't think that alone will do the trick.

Any ideas? See any red flags in my HijackThis report? Let me know! Or let me know where I could post this to the right audience if this is not it.

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

Kevin