A lot of tips shooting to the dark.

For a slow PC, I would look at resource hogs before I bothered with the Event Logs.

Hi there,

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I'm rather overwhelmed.

But I've done some more stuff ... using more Malware tools, disk cleanup, driver updates, etc.

I tried removing the external drives. Does not help.

There have been a lot of not responsive delay messages and temporary black screens. Not since my attempts, started before.

On logout saw some kind of weird Windows warning message with a long string of characters but it wasn't up long enough to record.

In any case based on my many years of seeing computer's bug out ... my gut feeling is that this is probably more of a damaged HARDWARE issue than software.

Possibly caused by malware.

Haven't decided on specific response yet ... whether to bother even reinstalling Windows or maybe shopping for a new computer. I didn't actually buy this current cheap one intending it to be my primary computer and now have a better idea of what would be better for my current needs ... somewhat higher end but not much.

If you like tinkering with stuff you can probably fix for not much money.

If you're up to it, download a Bootable Live Linux build from distrowatch.com. One that's not too lightweight though, that will run fast on anything, but something more meaty (Mint?).

If it works fine then you know it isn't hardware, but software.

Then, if you have the easy option of a Fresh Install, I'd just do that to save mucking about.

Or just migrate to Linux completely if you are only after browsing, email and stuff.

Sounds like you're running out of memory and getting bogged down when your system has to constantly use the HD for swap space. Do you have a lot of browser tabs open at a time? How much free memory is reported when the issue occurs?

I have a similar sounding problem on an Acer Netbook with no cooling fan. (Plenty of RAM, though)

It appears to be a temperature problem that causes my CPU to throttle itself back to as low as 2% of Maximum Frequency. I pick it up with Resource Monitor, clicking the link on the Performance tab of the Task Manager.

There are some things that seem to exacerbate the problem, including running videos when the room's just cooling down, and downloading content from the interweb.

I suspect it's a defective machine, but it's my backup, it's out of warranty, and it only cost $280, so I live with it.

^^ That's a good point; if the symptom occurs when you're browsing you could try starting the Browser in safe mode and see if it still happens.

Are you using file backup? Is there a folder in the almost full drive named "file history"? Expect that could cause a real slowdown if the drive were almost full.

You can open settings, update & security, backup, backup using file history (if turned on), more options, overview to find drive used and make other arrangments to turn off or move of if can remove other items from drive probably best.

It's an Acer with no fan but the problem is fully there from cool startup. I'm very aware of browser memory issues with multiple tabs so that isn't it. Don't use any auto backup. The horrible symptoms are there on startup with nothing open. Such as file delete. Always super slow regardless. Browser slowdown more likely with multiple processes though.

So how much free memory do you have?

Goodness knows why the thread didn't begin with brand name and full model number in the first place.

Check Power Options - Change plan settings - Change advanced power settings - scroll down and click on 'processor power management' - Maximum processor state....

I would have already run a clean install and have done with it...

How this has turned out is pretty funny!

I don't like to take drastic action (reinstall Windows) too quickly because it's such a major pain to start over.

That's why I posted here looking for some CLUES on what I could try before doing anything like that.

In preparation for doing that though, I moved off a bunch of files that didn't need to be on my C drive before I went out tonight.

Someone had asked before if my C drive was nearly full and no, it wasn't anywhere close to nearly full. So I had really totally ruled that out as the cause of the problem.

But like I said I moved off a bunch of files and powered off.

While out, I even found a new laptop to buy in case it came to that.

So I powered up and things seem more zippy. No delay on the web. Got to try file delete and rename. OMG -- normal! Open video -- normal!

So that was DEFINITELY it.

Apparently at least on my system with such little RAM, leaving LOTS of space on the C drive is NEEDED.

Anyway ... really no further action needed.

Thanks for all the input.

Next ...

Like I said, if you don't have enough memory, your system will use disk space to swap things out to virtual memory. This will always cause a lot of slowdown, but even more so if there is limited free space on the disk.

I guess it's weird that it used to work fine with a similar amount (more than AMPLE, I had thought) of free C drive space, and then it didn't. It's not as if I had recently loaded up the drive.

It might be a sign that your drive is on the way out.

My netbook when I changed to Win 10, after some time. had similar problems as the OP. After trying many things, I went through and deleted all the apps that I knew I would never use or did not need. Many I believe were unnecessarially running in the background. It made an amazing improvement in the speed of my Acer Netbook with 4gb of Ram (max).

Event viewer is quite easy to use and you can google items found in the results to see what they do. Fixed problems with my laptop.