My partner gave up and reinstalled Windows while keeping her personal files. The issue disappeared. I will keep this solution in mind in case the problem reappears. Thank you for your time and...

I used Shift-Restart to perform the recommended steps, will try with a USB drive as soon as I can. Apologies for the longer delay - international travel is not fun.

I cannot perform a good System...

I will attempt this on Sunday, New Zealand time as we are about to fly between countries. I will post the results when I get it done.

Yes, that's exactly what I did to get the black screen.

No, the computer has no optical drive. It's a laptop.

I assume you mean "Clean Boot into Normal (i.e. not Safe) Mode". The checkboxes behaved appropriately this time but the OS would not load, instead staying on a black screen with the scrolling circle...

The issue is not present in Safe Mode.

I performed the steps requested, and observed the following:

When selecting "Disable All", the checkboxes all changed to unticked. However, as soon as I selected "Apply", all three services for...

My partner's computer is having a problem with Windows Explorer running slowly and poorly. It's been happening for nearly a month, she ascribes the timing of symptoms beginning to show to the same...

I just posted saying the problem has been solved.

This evening, the computer started throwing BSODs that said "DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION". This message fell to a quick Google search and I discovered that the Driver Verifier program was...

Over the last few days (since maybe Thursday but definitely Friday) my Win10 machine has been running slowly in certain situations. The programs iTunes, GSAK, and Unreal Tournament 2004 run slowly in...

My father's account on our family PC is having an interesting issue. His Start button is not working with left click, and his taskbar apps are not responding to right clicking. Also interestingly,...

So I have been very busy over the last little while, which is why I haven't replied, but it appears a recent Windows update fixed it. One day last week the problem was there, then it wasn't this...

My video card is an AMD Radeon HD 5700 series. The latest version of the driver for that is either March 8th or August 3rd of this year (because my box uses either US or AU/NZ/UK date formats,...

Both, yes. Apparently I had the most recent drivers in both cases.

Well, underclocking didn't solve the problem. Any other ideas?

Yes! Pretty much that sound, only it happens for a fraction of a second and never leads to a crash.

I will certainly give that fix a try, but my graphics card was by no means high-end way back in...

An electronic sound, low-ish pitched in nature (but not bass), rarely mimicking the (legitimate) sound that the computer is making at the moment it freezes. It's similar (but not identical) to the...

The only thing that these occurrences really have in common is that I'm using Windows, along with some media running. I've never seen the CPUs at their limit before.

There may be something simple I'm overlooking here, but recently I've noticed that audio on my computer (music, videos, games) every so often plays a glitchy sound, and the video and music lag for...