New
#11
Yes, I definitely got the impression it could be a driver issue, but I was not having success trying new ones. However now it is solved, Yay!!! Even though Device Manager told me I had the best drivers installed when I told it to check for updates automatically, I still felt it was a driver problem, so I went ahead and instead told it to "browse my computer for driver software". There were two results; the existing Intel driver and another called "Standard SATA AHCI Controller". So I picked the Standard one instead and now everything works great and I am able to optimize. The driver is Microsoft 06-21-2006 version 10.0.10586.0.
Thank you all for the help. It feels great to have everything working as it should. Well, almost...I have a slight problem with Windows Defender that I will post in the appropriate forum after this.