Scans are all coming up clean and my anti-virus is UTD. It began with my computer not shutting down properly, going to a blue screen w/the message "Preparing to configure Windows. Do not shut computer off..." It was stuck there for hours (overnight actually), so I had to shut it down. Now upon rebooting, I am taken to a black screen with the choice of starting in several different safe modes or in the normal mode. For a while, I could not access my husband's desktop. The message said the User Profile Service had failed, or something like that. I was able to find a solution, which included some regedit changes that I followed to a tee, online.
I am fairly confident I do not have a virus. I recalled that during my last use of CCleaner, the cleaner seemed to pick up many more files in the registry cleaning than ever before even though I had not ticked any additional categories to be cleaned (if that makes sense). Not knowing any better, I had CC fix "all selected problems." I believe this is the root of my problems. In looking at my CCleaner registry cleaner, ALL the boxes are ticked for some reason. I never checked them all and am clueless as to why they are all checked now. In any event, I always make a back up of the registry before I clean it, and noticed the size of the latest CC registry back-up is more than FOUR TIMES the size of previous files. Weird. I would like to "merge" or restore the files somehow, but I keep getting the same error message I posted initially.
I will try it again in Safe Mode to see if I can get it done. Any other suggestions you might have are welcome! Thanks.