Hi - this is my first time posting here so please let me know if there's more or different information that you need, and forgive me if I've made any cardinal sins in the world of computer maintenance. Here's the story....
I have a Dell laptop with Windows Vista. When I woke it up out of "hibernate" mode two days ago it was incredibly slow and I couldn't get anything to run without freezing the whole computer. I tried to run AVG, but it would get part way through the scan then freeze as well. I started the computer in Safe mode, and AVG appeared to run all the way through, but just as I caught a glimpse of the screen it had restarted the computer in regular (non-safe) mode so I don't know what, if anything, it found. I did a system restore to a month prior to the problem, and everything worked much better except I couldn't download files from my gmail or any website, and I couldn't get AVG to open so that I could rescan the computer. I would click but nothing happened. I then downloaded Malwarebytes anti-malware to a USB drive and ran it on my computer from there - it stopped working at the following file: windows\assembly\nativeimages_v20.50727_32\system.net\892f786ce756bd2e0ca400a8dae347a58\system.net.ni.dll.
I ran the Malwarebytes again in Safe Mode and it got all the way through the scan with no viruses detected. I figured out that a big part of the downloading problem I had had earlier was due to AVG so I removed that from my computer and was able to download files again. Then I downloaded a second virus detector - Avira, and that froze at a similar file - I couldn't get the whole thing but it started with the same windows\assembly\nativeimages_v20.50727_32\........but ended in \system.printing.ni.dll.
What is this windows\assembly file and is it corrupted? Do I have a virus? Any advice would be much appreciated! Thank you!
