My Asus laptop has an almost identical problem BUT it's somehow related to the monthly Microsoft updates. It begins to slow down about two weeks after an update and the week prior to the update (2nd Tuesday of the month) it's almost unusable. My workaround is to uninstall the most recent update, reboot and then install the update again and reboot. This "fix" attacks the symptoms but not the cause. By the way, I've always had the updating of other PC's disabled in my settings.
I know this has been done to death on the forum. When I searched for “slow computer” or “slow windows”, there were thousands of responses.
I’ve had my Acer Aspire for a couple of years now and have the latest, most up-to-date version of Windows 10 (64-bit). Granted, I use a lot of software, particularly Google Chrome with loads of tabs open, and software like Skype (two instances) and Office 365 and various background processes like Malwarebytes, McAfee Security, f.lux, DropBox, OneDrive, etc. But I have a fast computer configuration: 256GB SSD drive for Windows and all the installed software and my “working data” with an extra 1TB regular hard drive for archiving and backup – and 16GB RAM.
And I have BoostSpeed and CCleaner and have tweaked Windows in various ways to optimize performance, and I tend to close apps I’m not using to reduce the RAM load (but I shouldn’t have thought that would make a difference as they’re probably not running in the background, or at least are sitting in virtual RAM on the SSD, so shouldn’t be a drag on the system).
And yet my computer seems to have become gradually slower and slower with time. It was blindingly fast in the beginning, but now it can take half a minute just to launch File Explorer or the app I could be working (e.g. Excel or Google Chrome) displays “not responsive” for about 20-30 seconds before continuing with its operation.
Surely, it also doesn’t matter that I’ve installed loads of apps? It’s only if I run a lot of them together that they actually have a load on the computer, right?
Or could the delay be that the registry is now so huge that it takes ages to work through the database for any regular operation. I heard that many apps use the registry to store data (rather than a private database of their own). Is this normal? I scan the registry regularly and have followed all the main tweaks suggested in the various discussions, on CNET and elsewhere. And yet my computer is still slow.
The only thing I haven’t tried is to make a clean install. However, this is a huge job. Just re-installing all the apps can take several days, plus I have to reconfigure hundreds of settings in Outlook and the antivirus software, the firewall and other utilities (and reset all the File Explorer library and default view settings and backup protocols), and tweak Windows all over again from scratch, etc. etc.
Are there some useful utilities that can identify what’s really happening under the hood or some software that will really and truly optimize the computer (BoostSpeed and CCleaner don’t seem to make all the much of a difference, and of course as I had an SSD there’s no need for defragmenting either)?
I will be grateful for any ideas or pointers (or even a link to an up-to-date discussion that deals thoroughly with this subject). Many thanks in advance.
--Submitted by Gary O.

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