Trying to find out why my computer is so slow

Laptop, it's kind of lived, it came with Windows 7 on it, i7, 4gigs. I upgraded to Windows 10.

During the last few months it's gotten really slow. Windows take a long time to open when I click on them. Clicking the start button takes a while to open. My Disk is essentially always at 100% even when only 0.1MB is being used. I don't understand how this is possible, I've made other threads about it but don't understand the answer.

Firefox slows after I have it open for too long. Websites take a long time to load. Opening programs takes eons. Whatever I do just takes so long.

After a reboot it's somewhat faster, but slows down again right after. Sometimes restarting my computer takes a while. Possible suggestions?

- - - Updated - - -

Let me know if you guys want a video of what I'm talking about.

Open taskmanager look at start up tab what have you got loading and what is the impact. What version are you on rin winver to find out. If your pc is due a major update it could be downloading gigs of data

For startup tab I have

Adobe GC Invoker Utility
ETD Control Center
ETD Control Center
Microsoft OneDrive
NVIDIA Update Backend
pc-client this is a print program we use at work
SpotifyWebHelper
Windows Security notification icon

what is rin winver

I hear you.

I had upgraded to Windows 10 a couple of years ago. And it used to run pretty well.

But after Microsoft rolled out those security patches to Spectre (I think it was) and I installed them, Windows 10 File Explorer slowed down to a crawl. If I drag and drop a file from one folder window to another, it takes 30 seconds before it shows up. Many other file operations just sit there while the little blue thing just spins and spins.

I wish I could find out how to remove those security patches. I don't appreciate Microsoft's help here. I depend on Norton and Malwarebytes to handle such things.

I doubt whether you should have ETD Control Center twice. I would try disabling both of those temporarily to test the effect after a restart. Then re-enable one if you need multi-touch gestures on the trackpad.

If that has no effect, I think you should disable Norton temporarily to test performance without it for a short period.

(There's really no overlap between Microsoft security patches and Norton/Malwarebytes antivirus.)

Ok here's the thing. When I first startup my computer, it's fast(er), but then as I use it, it gets slower and slower. It seems like all the memory goes to one thing for example if I am using OpenOffice and then I want to open a file in Explorer, I click on start menu and it takes FOREVER to open. Then I open explorer and it takes forever to open. Then I open the file. Then, if I close the file and do it again, start menu opens faster than the first time. Explorer opens faster than the first time.

You said most of that a week ago, but you haven't responded to five suggestions (same as your last two threads over 18 months).

Many things can make a computer slow.
- Not enough free disk space.
- Many programs running on the background and not enough physical memory
- Windows update is downloading or preparing to install an upgrade.
- Most common is that the HDD has a problem.

Start by scheduling a disk check. Open a CMD window as Administrator and type:
Chkdsk C: /f
It will say your disk is in use and if you want to schedule to next start = yes
Reboot
Pay attention on the results, specially bad blocks, bad clusters or bad sectors.
Report