Major StartUp and Performance Problems After Blackout ???

I will start at the beginning.
Windows 7 Pro on a DELL Optiplex 780m tower with AMD Graphics Card

The machine was ON with three or four photo editing programs open, but no activity for long enough that the monitor had "gone to sleep"
The electricity suddenly went out for about five minutes.
Always before, whenever one of our computers lost power, it would remain OFF until it was physically turned ON; not so this time.
Much to my amazement, when the power came back on, the machine immediately powered up and began to boot.
It got as far as all of the task-bar and about half of the desktop icons and froze there; it would not respond to anything.
Cap-Locks does turn ON/OFF; I read somewhere that this had relevancy.
I let it alone a spell, but it remained in the frozen state; so, I held in the power button until it shut-down.
Numerous re-tries resulted in varying degrees of starting Windows, tried with and without a system repair disc; results seemed to matter not whether with or without the disc.
Safe Mode starts right up and everything seems to respond, however response is very sluggish.
About one start out of ten, it will go ahead and start and programs will work and things will seem fine; then, it will freeze up again and the only remedy is a forced shut-down.
In safe mode, I restored to a system restore point; it said the restore was successful; but, when it restarted, it was froze up again.
It seems to take forever starting Windows, much longer than before the blackout.

I have read internet searches until my eyes are sore, seeking a solution or a verdict, but none of the things that come up resemble my situation.

How do I fix this ?

Thanks for reading.

Since my initial posting, I found, read, and followed these instructions:

Your PC boots, gets to the Windows desktop, then freezes. Now what? | PCWorld

I started in Safe Mode, accessed msconfig, then startup tab, and disabled all options; I then restarted and it did then successfully get past the desktop; however, everything is very sluggish and slow to respond.
I haven't yet had time to experiment with turning ON one-by-one the things that I just did turn OFF to see which was the culprit, nor have I had time to restart a few times to see if that indeed helped, or if it is just one of those rare instances where it has been starting.

When you have a shutdown like you did, some opened files can get corrupted.
Do a disk check.
Boot from the win 7 installation disk, go to repair and launch a CMD window. Type:
chkdsk c: /f
Pay attention on the results, specially for bad blocks or bad clusters.
Then run sfc /scannow 3 times.

Do you have surge arrest? If you don't, you should. Any power break generates high voltage peaks and harmonics.

Any surge arrest with more than 2.000 J and with a switch is good.
SurgeArrest - Newegg.com

I would buy this BELKIN BE112230-08 8 Feet 12 Outlets 3780 Joules Surge Protector with Telephone and Coaxial Protection - Newegg.com

Megahertz07 said:

Do a disk check.

Thanks; I will put that in motion within the moment.

The machine is plugged into what is supposed to be a surge-protecting power strip; I would have to move fifty things to see it and tell just what it is.

Thanks for the links and recommendations.

chkdsk is still doing it's thing.

TechnoMage2016 said:

Please.....Please.....don't waste good money on a Surge Arrestor (Protector) if you don't already have a Battery Backup system (UPS).

I already have this on my Christmas list, providing Santa Claus is not having a financial dilemma:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009TZTGWK...=1DVCIIRSXZ5ME

Please point me towards the $39.95 one that you mention.

If Check disk is taking that long, that isn't a good signal.
May be it's time to buy a small SSD (128G) for windows and programs and a new HDD for data.

A UPS is a good solution as a no break, but it isn't a warrant to protect from spikes. Only those that has a good surge arrest (more than 2.000 J) can protect till it switch from line to the battery inverter.

Megahertz07 said:

If Check disk is taking that long, that isn't a good signal.

chkdsk finally completed sometime within the last hour.

The last line reads: "Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50."

Above this there are several lines of various number amounts and such and then:

"Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system."

Scattered throughout are mentions of deleting file this and file that.

At the very beginning, there are eight separate duplicate sentences in two groups of four with consecutive numbering:

1% complete <59156 of 311808 file records processed>
File record segment 59156 is unreadable

The first four of these are 59156 thru 59159.
The second four are 59276 thru 59279.


I haven't touched it since it finished; the command line window is still open and readable.

This is a 2TB WD-Blue that is maybe six months old.
There are three separate lettered drives/partitions on it; the system C: drive is 300-GB, strictly photo image files are 1TB, miscellaneous documents and data is on whatever remains (app. 700-GB).

Did this application of chkdsk do only the C: drive or the whole disk ?

Do I need to save this chkdsk readout and, if so, how do I accomplish that? (I am thinking maybe I cannot according to that last line.)

Do I run scannow 3-times now ?