Resolved Laptop only lags when there is a network connection

I'm not sure if this is the right section to post this in or not. I think my problem might be malware related but I'm not sure.

I have a HP Pavilion dv7-1275dx laptop that is on Windows Vista SP2. I started having problems maybe on April 6. I woke up and my laptop was on Blue Screen Of Death. Ever since then my laptop has been running very slow. The strange thing is if I disable my wifi so there is no network connection the laptop runs normal. As soon as I turn the wifi back on and then it automatically connects to the modem/router everything starts to run slow. I also tried a wired connection and a USB wifi adapter and its the same behavior.

I've been trying to fix this for a few days and the BSOD only came back once when everything was running slow. The error was KERNAL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR, ataport.SYS. I looked this up and some people suggest it might be hard drive going bad, but if this were true then wouldn't my laptop always be slow and not just when I'm connected to the internet?

Windows Update was last updated on April 5. There were some Windows Defender definition updates. Windows Defender reports nothing found. I scanned with Spybot and it found some stuff and deleted it. I then scanned with Malwarebytes and it found something that I thought might be a false positive so I looked it up and it seems to be a registry cleaner program, I uninstalled it (regalive.exe), this was installed in 2010 so I don't think this could be causing my problem. I then scanned with avast and it found nothing.

I usually download all the driver updates that are available for a laptop but some people on this forum recommended me not to. They said if it ain't broke don't fix it. The bios for my laptop is using the latest one already. I updated my wireless adapter drivers and this didn't fix my problem. I tried to update my ethernet adapter drivers but the ones shown on the HP website show an even older release date then the one I have for some reason so I left this driver alone.

The weird thing is right when there is a network connection everything starts to lag. I opened the Task Manager and it looks to be running normal. Under the Performance tab there is about 1.5GB of ram used up and I have 4GB total. The CPU usually stays around 1-7%. The lag feels like something is hogging up all of my resources but when looking at the Task Manager everything looks fine.

Right when I make a network connection I tried to scan for new updates for Windows Updates but it just keeps scanning forever. I also tried to update the definitions for avast but it just gets stuck too, so the definitions are updated until about April 5 only. I was able to update definitions for Spybot and Malwarebytes though but it would keep freezing and unfreezing every few seconds but it updated successfully. When I try to open Internet Explorer or Firefox it also lags. I tried updating Firefox to version 20.0 but that didn't help. When the laptop is running slow usually Firefox won't even open but when it does open it'll keep freezing and unfreezing non-stop, it says not responding then hangs then loads a little then back to not responding in an endless loop. When I Right-Click on my desktop the context menu sometimes takes a long time to load up, after it select Refresh sometimes it takes a few seconds before it refreshes the screen. When browsing through my Start menu all the icons take some time to load up the icon pictures. All of this lag feels like something is taking up all of my resources.

What should I do now? Do you think my problem is malware related? The only time the laptop slows is right after it connects to the internet and if I disconnect the connection it stays running slow, its so slow that I waited 30 minutes for the laptop to shutdown and it wouldn't shutdown so I'm forced to shutdown by holding the Power button. If I boot up and do not connect to the internet I can shutdown/restart with no problems. I have a second laptop that connected to the modem/router with no problems so I don't think it is a modem/router problem.

 

Did you try a System Restore? It's a way to undo system changes to your computer without affecting your personal files, such as e-mail, documents, or photos.

 

I was going to try this but the oldest restore point is April 8.

OK, I made a new thread in the Malware and Virus Removal Forum located here.

 

This was my brother's laptop and he decided to format it back to factory settings instead of going through the malware and virus removal process. The format fixed his problem and his laptop no longer lags when he connects to the internet.