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Windows 7 freezes - programs open very slowly
I have two Dell Vostro 420 machines both with 6 Gb of RAM and both running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. Each machine has exactly the same hardware components but different video cards. I only visit "legitimate" websites - no websites that might be known for viruses, etc.
Up until about 4 days ago each machine was running OK. I have run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scans, SuperAnti-Spyware scans, ESET NOD32 Version 5 Anit-virus scans and Webroot Malware and Anti-virus scans on both machines and they come up clean.
I defrag the hard drives, keep the recycle bin empty and I have checked for disk errors on reboot.
The startup list only has 5 or 6 programs for each machine.
When I open a program - Adobe Photoshop CS5, Microsoft Office 2007, etc. it takes 1 minute or more for it to open. When I am using the programs all of the sudden both machines will freeze for between 1 and 3 minutes. Sometime they will recover but many times I need to reboot. It's just as if the machine is off doing something else. Many times when I do a mouse click especially right mouse clicks the circular hour glass starts rotating for ever and will not stop. I am not able to open Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del, nothing happens. On rare occasions I will get a message saying that Task Manager can't open and to hit the Esc key and power cycle the machine. The only way to recover is to power cycle the machines.
I have not run sfc /scannow yet. That might be my next step. I am trying to do a Repair Install as the last resort.
I normally have automatic updates turned ON to install updates each morning at 3 a.m. as the machines run 24/7. Since both machines started acting the same pretty much at the same time I am thinking it might be a bad Windows update. This morning on one of the machines I was able to do a system restore back to November 11, 2011 and I have turned automatic updates OFF until I see if the machine is fixed. At some point in time I will have to turn the automatic updates back ON.
I have not run any memory tests, etc. because I think it would be very unlikely that both machines had memory issues at exactly the same time.
I use both of these machines for my work so it's important that they are operational. Any ideas the forum has would really be appreciated.
Thanks!
Bill