Need Some Thoughts on a Problem My Son is having

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Sep 19, 2008
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I need some toughts from folks who know computers. A few weeks ago, my son paid over $2000 for a very high end MSI computer. While he has a day job, he also is an artist and loves playing games. He wanted more speed, memory, etc. Well, he gets it home, sets it up (he is computer literate), gets it running and begins to download some Microsoft apps from the Microsoft "store". All goes well for about 72 hours and suddenly stuff like the search function stop working. This continues to get worse. He takes it back to Best Buy and the Geek squad does some stuff. Works again but at around three days, same stuff starts to go bad. They give him another computer. Same thing. Takes it back, gets the third computer and behold, the same thing happens at around 72 hours. He calls Microsoft and they look at it over the phone, do some software manipulation but cannot correct it. They tell him they have no idea. He calls MSI and they basically hang up on him! So he is taking it back to Best But for a fourth computer. Nobody seems to have any idea. He deletes all the apps he put on but the problems remain. He has taken the computer back to ground zero, restarts it and the problems remain.

1. Bad set of ROM or RAM chips?

2. Hidden virus that has a 72 hour timer built in?

3. Some software glitch that has not been identified?

4. The witch of December came calling....

Any ideas I can share with my son would be appreciated!! Thanks in advance.
 
What OS? They make a "lite" version of Win 11 that only works with MS store stuff.

And how old's the kid?
 
Here is the report from Malwarebytes. Actually the games he plays are simple in nature. More for his two sons. My bad.
Malwarebytes
Having trouble viewing this message?
Click here to view this as a webpage.​
Here's your monthly security report
Windows
Threats Blocked: 0​
Windows
Devices Protected: 1​
Windows
Available Activations: 4​
Overview
Congratulations! You encountered zero threats this month. Between practicing safe browsing habits and using the protection of Malwarebytes Premium, you’re doing a great job staying safe online.​
Recommendation
Keep Real-Time Protection turned on at all times so threats like these never get a chance to go from harmless detection to serious infection.​
See a detailed version of your detection history
Filter by device, view the results for a specific scan, and download your detection data.

Learn how: Windows | Mac
 
Gaming with 32gb of memory?
Good luck.
What is that supposed to mean? 32GB is overkill.

I would advise him not to "tweak" the system at all. Run it as "out of the box" as possible and see if the symptoms re-occur. Avoid the Microsoft Store. Most games these days come from places like Steam, Origin, or GOG.

Take a system snapshot before doing anything so it's easy to restore to a known good configuration.

Let Windows Updates fully install after the snapshot and before starting to use it. Maybe one of the updates is choking the system.
 
I've run into that before. Probably some Microsoft update that ends up bricking the machine. Had that happen to a brand new Microsoft Surface 7+ out of the box. He should probably get it, and make a restore point. Real pain though, probably some hardware item is causing the OS to brick itself so I'd just get a different model. They come out with updates all the time so probably the next update will fix it. You could also disable updates but then you don't know when it reenables them will the next update brick the machine or not? You just have to make more restore points.
 
None of what I posted fixes the OP's issue. I've had no issues with any of MS's updates, but there are PLENTY who have. I'd guess this is a software issue, not a hardware issue.
 
I'm not much of a computer technician but it sounds like he's picking up spyware or something that's slowing the system down. My laptop is an older model HP and had been running pretty bad for a few months. A few weeks ago I downloaded the free version of Restoro and let it scan the computer then I made repairs using their program. My computer is running much better. If it starts slowing down or giving problems I run a scan and make the repairs and it's good again. They recommend running a scan at least weekly.
 
I've had the same PC since 2012 as my main machine. It has 32GB RAM which is enough to run a virtual machine, DaVinci Resolve, LightRoom, and type this message all at the same time with about 6GB memory to spare. I know some games take a lot of memory, but 32GB should be plenty.
 
I would advise him not to "tweak" the system at all. Run it as "out of the box" as possible and see if the symptoms re-occur.
This is great advice. As @himemsys said, don't load anything on it, instead just run it as is and see if the problem occurs. I'll bet the problem won't come back and you'll be on your way to figuring out what loaded software is causing the problem.
 
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