Originally Posted by
Grayfly
Thanks, I'll give that a go.
It can be interesting to create yourself a new user account on the computer and see if it runs more quickly when you log in under that username rather than the one you've been using up till now. Just make sure that you log off all users except the new one. Remember that, by default, shutting down or restarting Windows does not log current users out, even though it warns you that it's going to. You have to turn off 'Fast Start' if you want it to force users off when you shut down.
I found out by accident that a new user I created had a much better performance that I did on our family computer.
I've a theory that one of the things that causes Windows to slow down is the interminable time it spends sorting through your files and folders, scanning them for viruses and creating indexes and databases so that it can categorise your data for you; and every time you change something it starts doing it all again.