Windows 10: Trouble with a Windows 10 laptop 7/16/20

Hi all! So I'm pretty frustrated right now as I've spent several days searching for a fix for my problem. In the last 3 days my HP laptop with Windows 10, v1909 8 gb RAM has suddenly slowed down VERY drastically. The problem literally started overnight. It was slow to the point that I was waiting over a minute for a browser window to load or even to open up a window in File Explorer.

I had no problems before now at all and it looked like my computer would last even several more years! Wishful thinking I mostly use my computer for web browsing, Office tools, and streaming.


I admit to a couple things that I'm not sure if they're related, but here they are for completeness sake.
1 I had not fully shut down the system in a while. It frequently went into sleep mode but I've since shut down multiple times and no improvement.
2 I had a Chrome window open with probably 15+ tabs open for 2 days. I NEVER did this before, but it was something I did before the slowdown. I'll blame it on COVID research. These are trying times!


So these are some things I've tried so far. I'm an avid computer user, but not an expert in technicality, so please bear with me.

1 I checked on updates and to see if there was any update that I could roll back that would improve things. There might have been 2 or so that even had a roll back option, but nothing changed.
2 I went to HP's drivers page and made sure I had the correct drivers graphics and BIOS in particular for my version of Windows installed. THIS MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE! I did get speeds down to about 15 seconds per page instead of 1 minute, but again this is nowhere near how fast it was before. I also am having a lot of problem streaming. It keeps saying an error that indicates an extension is being used but I disabled all extensions and antivirus too. Could this be related?

3 I cleared caches, browser histories, cookies, temporary files, recycling bin, etc.
4 Removed unused apps and files. I have 747 gb free out of 914 gb.
5 Checked speed testers and internet connection, which never gave me a problem before, and everything is up to par.

6 When I went to Task Manager I did notice that my Disk usage was 90+% and I've managed to bring this down after following some instruction manuals online. My memory is hovering between 50-60% with only 3 tabs in Chrome open and no other applications. CPU is from 5%-15%.

7 Ran several programs of free malware scans and defender full/offline and everything came back clean.

8 I tried a system restore but it ran overnight and then failed.



Please help me! I've been struggling for some time now and I can't figure out why everything suddenly became so slow or how to fix it! :

:)

 

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Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

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credit to Lifehacker.

 

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