Windows 10: Long Time PC Issue. Unable to find root cause after a year of diagnosing

Hello MS Community,I need some desparate help in identifying the issue with my PC. This problem has been ongoing for nearly a year. I thought I had fixed the issue but it seems apparent that it is still ongoing. This is a long story so please bear with me.It all started when I upgraded my GPU mid last year ~ July, and BSOD constantly showed up with a multitude of different errors. At that point, I had done everything in the books Memtest, clean reinstallation of PC, updated/reinstalled graphics drivers, resit RAM sticks etc to try and best identify the issue. The problem had fixed at that

:)

 

What are actual leading causes of PC sluggishness in 2017? (Facts, not myths, please!)

Hi Justin,

I feel that you provided a list of general categories of reasons why, perhaps historically, computers have experienced degraded performance. I'm seeking a prioritized list of what is specifically responsible for degraded performance on a PC in 2017 - likely
this is a Win10 machine. For example:

"When people bring us a computer with a performance problem, and we diagnose it:

1) 50% of the time the root cause is (e.g. installation of <specific application>)

2) 20% of the time the root cause is <specific reason>.

3) etc."

It would be helpful if each reason included diagnostic steps to help readers confirm whether the reason applies to their own PC/situation.

Also...

"In our experience, the following commonly cited problems are, in fact, rarely the root cause of performance problems:

1) Corrupted registry.

2) Fragmented hard drive (in Win 10 drives are automatically defragmented).

3) Viruses

4) etc."

I hope this helps to clarify the need...

Thanks!

 

VulnScan - Automated Triage & Root Cause Analysis of Memory Corruption

Read more: VulnScan - Automated Triage and Root Cause Analysis of Memory Corruption Issues Defense

 

BSOD Issues Unsolved For A Long Time

PC Froze while I was away for a bit. HDD light wasn't blinking and I had to manually restart, no minidump and nothing really unusual in Event Viewer...

Not sure if this is pertinent to anything, but looking at Device Manager tells me that all my drivers for various things like:

• Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (x3)
• Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller (x4)
• USB Composite Device (x2)
• USB Root Hub (x7)
• USB Root Hub xHCI (x1)

Are all from 10 years ago. I can't seem to find any newer versions of these drivers and Windows can't automatically find them either, just thought it might be worth bringing it up.