Outlook live mail freezem fail etc.

Hi Ken, Well, things are a bit brighter I guess. I did all of the deleting and cleaning that was suggested. Installed Firefox. I left it running for about 3 hours untended, and no pest popped up. I'm still not sure about Edge but will watch it over time. After all of the cleaning, etc. I tried to turn the computer off with the start menu closing functions and now Shutdown and Restart do nothing. My only option is to close with the button on the computer, which works and turns it off. Now a new related problem has appeared: Start will take as much as ten minutes, starting with a blank black screen, which lasts a number of minutes, with little or no disk activity, Trying CtrlAltDel produces the task manager menu and just clicking on it produces my startup desktop finally. I haven't intentionally gone to any relevant areas where I made any changes to any of the processes, No clue of what to do to correct it. I apologize for prolonging this ordeal, but do you have any suggestions other than trashing the whole thing? It went from a good operating computer to near trash in just a few strokes. I checked Setup and Power button is set to turn it as it should be. I saw no mention of how to access or change the options shown by clicking the Start icon so maybe I'm missing something somewhere. Any suggestions for this stage of my ongoing disaster?

Things are looking up! After two differently delayed starts yesterday aft. this morning it started up nearly normally. Must be all of the Canadian help flowing south. Just yesterday I did such an update on my laptop and it did just fine getting 1709, so will hope the desktop likes it as well. I'll let you knowm and maybe then you will be rid of me. I do appreciate the assist!