Solved Computer is suddenly very laggy after rebooting

[Shock a Lot]

So I restarted my computer, as I do every week or so. Once it booted up this time, it began running very slowly. Opening a Windows Explorer window has a laggy effect. Moving a window has a very laggy effect. Opening a browser window took an extra few seconds. Typing this sentence has a half-second lag--or even more when I'm typing faster. Clicking and scrolling also have that half-second lag, but moving the mouse is fine after startup finishes.

Trying to run Metal Gear Solid V (which normally runs at around 35 fps for me) ran at 1 fps and didn't actually get to the title screen before I gave up waiting.

What could possibly be going on here?

- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1 on a 128 GB SSD
- 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 processor
- 8 GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics card

The CPU usage is at normal levels. The Power Options indicate the maximum processor state is 100%. (The minimum is 5%, and the system cooling policy is set to Active.) Nothing here was changed.

Both Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware found no viruses on any of the drives.

All temperatures are at acceptable and normal levels: below 40°C (and 67°C for the graphics card).

All hard drives have plenty of extra space on them.

Check Disk results in no problems.

The System File Check results in no problems.

There were no recent Windows Updates.

There were no recent questionable downloads. (Just a few pictures here and there.)

Hard Disk Sentinel states that all drives are 100% healthy.

I didn't change any settings in the BIOS or in Windows. Besides playing games, browsing the Internet, and programming via an SSH connection, the only things I did differently was recently move and copy a bunch of files to an external drive and use Unlocker to delete a font file that failed to install.

(It's a legitimate font for a program I bought years ago. I tried installing the font, and it seemed to work. I didn't care anyway, so I tried deleting it along with the program. However, the file was still locked by the system, so I had to use Unlocker. It didn't quite work, so I rebooted to find that it finally disappeared.)

A few hours earlier, Microsoft Security Essentials accused WmiPrvSE.exe of being a virus. Interestingly, it was located in c:\Windows\wmi, which I cannot find in other computers. I found only one site that shared this exact issue: Failed to start service WMS - Error Id 1010 - Windows 10 Forums I deleted the wmi folder with netmon.exe in it. Unfortunately, this did not seem to be the cause of the lag.

The only other thing I can think of is that I tried extracting a large archived file on another drive, but it failed because the C:\ drive didn't have enough space on it (that's three times on three different computers where I experienced this stupid issue), so I cancelled it, and the space was freed up again. The computer worked fine for the few hours after this before the reboot.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the Forum.

I have seen this due to windows update issue.
On services, set WU to manual.
On WU page set to never check.
Reboot.
Report.

 

[Shock a Lot]

I set the Windows Update service Startup to Manual, and I set Windows Update to never check for updates.

Rebooted.

No change.

 

[mrjimphelps]

If your C: drive is full, or nearly full, this can slow things down. Free up as much space on C: as you can, then reboot into Safe Mode and defrag your C: drive. Run defrag a couple of times till the display shows that the drive is as defragged as it will get. Then reboot into normal mode.

 

[Megahertz07]

If your C: drive is almost full, disable virtual memory on C: and set it to a HDD.
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System - Advanced System properties - Performance settings - Advanced Tab - Virtual memory - Change. I make it a fix size = 2x my memory - Set

If your main drive is a SSD, don't defrag it. SSD's should never be defraged as it isn't a sping disk.

 

[Shock a Lot]

The C:\ drive is an SSD and is not full; there are 15 GB left on it, and that's after accounting for the 8 GB of virtual memory. I have it set to manually manage paging file sizes for all drives.

In the past, it has worked perfectly fine with less than 10 GB of space left on it, but I try to keep it above 10 GB.

I just finished running a full memory test that took hours. No issues with that.

I'm not seeing anything out of place in the UEFI ("BIOS").

I'm going to try reseating everything in the tower next and see if there are any changes in Safe Mode because silly me forgot about trying that.

 

[Shock a Lot]

Reseating did nothing. However, Safe Mode is as fast as it should be without any kind of lag. I don't know if this means whatever is causing the issue isn't happening in Safe Mode or if it's because Safe Mode doesn't require as many resources or something.

(By the way, is there no way to edit our posts? I don't like double-posting when I feel there's no need.)

 

[Megahertz07]

You should set Virtual memory to only one disk.
Did you run MSconfig to see what programs, services and processes are load on the background?
Run MSconfig and hide M$ processes and disable all others. Reboot.
If you find out that it's normal (faster then before), enable half and reboot.

Yes the owner of a post can edit a post he did and delete it.

 

[Shock a Lot]

I found the cause! It turned out to be a service called NVU, supposedly the NVIDIA driver updater. Disabling it works fine, so I'll leave it at that. I contacted Nvidia for more information about it.

Thank you!

Also, there is no edit button for any of my posts except immediately after posting something. Shortly afterwards, that edit button disappears, too.

 

[mrjimphelps]

I found the cause! It turned out to be a service called NVU, supposedly the NVIDIA driver updater. Disabling it works fine, so I'll leave it at that. I contacted Nvidia for more information about it.

Amazing how one service can literally slow everything down, and disabling that one service fixes everything.

Same thing happened to me when I upgraded from Windows 8.0 to 8.1 -- there was one item that was causing all kinds of problems with File Explorer (I don't recall the name of the program). I disabled it, and the problem with File Explorer disappeared.