unplug the power cable, press and hold the power button while counting to twenty.
release the power button, plug the power cord back in.
If it still does it you probably have a hardware problem.

Power buttons do not cause a computer to " completely freeze up " when you are using them on the Internet. By freezing up I mean the mouse, the keyboard, everything. In the past I would unplug the computer and eventually it would work and I would erase the hard drive and start over and it would happen again. I even ran D-Ban in it and it froze up again this time for good.

Some malware is at play here not a power button.

Again, take it back to the shop. We can’t help you...it needs hands-on troubleshooting. Geek Squad can diagnose and fix it.

Good luck.

Most BIOSes have setting that control what happens when AC power is restored after a power loss. It's quite possible that your BIOS is set so that your computer will attempt to boot when the power connector is attached.

Bad memory may be the cause of this, you may be dealing with to different problems, or both related to the same hardware problem, maybe a weak power supply that is going bad.

First: I agree with the above opinion that this sounds far more like a faulty switch than anything any malware would ever do.

Second: Malware causes harm, thus the name malware. What harm does this issue do exactly?

Third: I agree with the above suggestion for testing the switch action. This may be more a fault in the power display function of the switch, and it may be otherwise fully functional.

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What, instead of pressing the power button for 20s?

Perhaps a better and cheaper solution would be a nice tin-foil hat.

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I am glad that you are so amused.

I am remembering that a computer can be configured to always power up (turn on) when power is applied. Very handy in remote installations for recovery following a power failure...and yes, that setting is done in the BIOS.

Perhaps that’s how yours is set up. Go into the BIOS and check for that...you should be able to turn it off if that’s what you want.
Even if that’s set, turning it off manually with the power button should still shut it down, but if you then unplug it and plug it back in, it will power on and boot up.

BIOS settings would not cause the freeze, however. Some of the symptoms he describes sound like they COULD be firmware settings, but others sound like a hardware issue. Memory is certainly a suspect (likely the cheapest and easiest to fix), but drive (unlikely if he has already tried replacement), connector, controller, and motherboard are also possible.

NOTHING here sounds like malware.

I would love to boot to a diagnostic USB image and run memory and IO tests and see what turned up.

I bought the computer used from a repair shop that is now out of business. I guess I got somewhat taken by him. At any rate I bought it because he had installed a one terabyte hard drive and it only cost a little over $200.00. At any rate I am determined to get it up and running again before I die. With the trials and tribulations I have gone through with this computer, and the bad experiences I have had with windows computers in earlier days, leads me to believe the computer is being deliberately frozen up by someone using the Internet. I could very well be wrong about that but we will see.

I would love to send it to you to see what you came up with; but I would never burden you with my problems. There is an older guy at the geek squad and I am going to ask him to look at it.

Like I said: this is totally possible (well, if your computer is powered up and connected to the internet, obviously, although thinkgs like wake on LAN or even wake on WLAN also exist).
It's also totally possible that a Boeing 747 will fall on my head when I leave the house tomorrow morning.
Doesn't make it likely though.

Show us something that would consolidate your suspicions in that direction.

Until then: Occam's razor. There's about a million things that are more likely to be causing this. The first 100,000 being variations of PEBKAC.

The folks at the " geek squad " do not have any answers other than buy a new computer. One guy told me HP motherboards are " proprietory like microsoft " but I think a ASUS motherboard is in that computer. At any rate things do not look good.