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A couple of notes about the process:

If your old Windows 10 setup was the result of an upgrade from Windows 7, you have the Windows DVD player.  After doing the clean install, you will not.  Easiest way to remedy this, if you want to continue playing DVDs, is to install the latest VLC (videolan.org).

If you are using the built-in Windows security (and probably even if you are using a third-party program), you will want to re-check the Windows security icon in the tray every few days.  I have found it usually requires action (or dismissing the warning) 3 or 4 separate times over the course of installing and rebooting.

Two glaring omissions in Windows 8/10- due to the lack of MSCONFIG. On the Task Manager:
The start-up tab does not identify the Registry setting or startup file that corresponds to the entries. This means that I have much more time to manually locate the file.
The services tab does not give the option to filter out the Microsoft services. This means I have go to services.msc and slowly work through the entire list.

I routinely work on people’s machines that either have crapware/malware that is either ahead of their antivirus or (more often) not seen because their out-of-date antivirus was compromised. And while I use many diagnostic and repair tools, a manual inspection is always part of the process. The lack of these Windows 7 “features” just means it takes considerably longer to inspect.

I caused this problem on a machine by accidentally deleting the entry from the registry- IE’s “preapproved” listing. (HLMSoftwareWow6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExtPreApproved). It was deleted from the 32-bit version but not the 64-bit, so it still showed up in Internet Options, Programs, Manage Add-ons, Toolbars and Extensions. (Registry key: {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000})

Uninstalling and reinstalling Flash did nothing. Copying the key from the 64-bit version (HLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExtPreApproved) and re-creating it in the 32-bit section solved the problem. (If this is your problem you create a new key and paste the key I’ve copied.)

ANOTHER TAKE ON WINDOWS 8 SIGNINS.
Fred, I have found for the vast majority of average users I set up on Windows 8, the most trouble-free way is to use a local account (most with no password, some do create a password). In order to do this during the initial setup, when you come to the point where it asks for your Microsoft account, you have to click “Create an account” and then on that screen, you have the option of logging on with a local account. By taking a couple other steps- removing the trial antivirus and turning on Windows Defender, and installing Classic Shell to replace the Start button, I have given them a Windows 7-style machine that requires no other learning curve (easier than putting them on a Mac)… except for the gotchas- if they move the mouse to a corner, something will popup: ignore it and go on; if they accidentally click on “Start Screen” on the top of the Start menu, they need to click “Desktop” to get out of it; and if they do play around with the tile screen and try to play a game, Microsoft might trick them into creating/logging into a Microsoft account, and then make the Microsoft account the default sign-in (that is the default behavior). Anyway, for most of my customers, who are regular home PC users, this has been the easiest for all, and usually avoids the hassles I have had with Microsoft accounts.

When I was first setting people up with Windows 8, I assumed that creating a Microsoft account to start with was the way to go. The first problem might have been fixed by now, but it used to take up to a half hour to wait for the creation of a new Microsoft account. If you went to live.com and created it there, it was easy, but from the Windows 8 setup screen, a long wait. It was bad enough that I would go to a customer’s home with laptop in hand so that I could get online and create their Microsoft account from my computer and then set it up on theirs.

I had one customer who had a Microsoft account and was already using OneDrive, but when we setup her Windows 8 machine and she found that since she logged in with her account, her Hotmail and OneDrive were already logged in, this was not acceptable for her. Apparently even though she had to log in initially, there were other people around that she didn’t feel safe without having to log in to those areas separately. So though she had a Microsoft account, she chose to move to a local account with a password.

The other issues have to do with password problems. I have dealt with enough of these over the years that I am sure that these are sometimes mangled (inadvertently) by the company (Microsoft or whoever). I have been the email contact for several people who gained “probationary” access to their Microsoft account for thirty days: this happens when out of the blue, Microsoft suddenly decides after you log in that you need to confirm some other security measure such as mobile phone (though most of these created their Microsoft account before this information was added) or security questions that are case-sensitive. I have to educate people all the time to write down their user-id, password, and security answers for every account they create. So this is not just a Microsoft issue, but Microsoft seems to be among the most annoying about it.

Sometimes people get into trouble because they heed Microsoft’s initial advice that they can use their current (Non-Microsoft) email address for their Microsoft account. This usually goes bad; it confuses people who do change their email password when now they can’t log in, and (at least in the past, this might have been fixed) usually they couldn’t even log in with that address at live.com. So I’ve since told people who are creating a Microsoft account to not use a non-Microsoft email address.

But the worst case I called in on was when a woman’s Microsoft account log in somehow got changed- she knew the password she always used, but that didn’t work and at live.com she got a temporary password and then created a new password. So far so good. But then her internet went down. She could not log in to her computer because she had to enter the last password she used- not the original she had, that one hadn’t worked; possibly the mangled one that she had to bypass earlier; more probably the temporary password that Microsoft gave her which she used and then threw away because she changed it. We had to get her router replaced and then get the computer online (as I recall, I was able to access the wifi connection to get her online; but I was prepared to move the desktop into the room with the router and cable it in), and then she was able to log in. She was said to me, this can’t happen again, and we went with a local account.

Agreed- sudden slowdowns are usually caused by malware. When I come to a home where someone is running Vista/7/8, the first thing I check is Control Panel, Programs and Features, and then sort the list by date. That usually tells all- I would say the average PC I see has at least 10 malware (not officially virus- but should be) programs running, and I am not surprised to see upwards of 20-30 installed. So I uninstall anything that has some kinds of savings, toolbar, and a few others that have become familiar, plus others that installed at the same time (in consultation with the owner, of course). Then I reboot, clean out from the AppData and ProgramData folders any relics of these programs, reset whatever browsers are installed, update the running antivirus, and run Malwarebytes to clean up whatever relics of the programs are still there.

The article is fairly accurate as it stands- for sudden slowdowns, with one glaring omission. Though I have usually been with the others who said these are overwhelming software problems, I have found, probably because people are using their PCs longer, that hard drive failures cause many of the slowdowns. You can often see this in the Event Viewer. But if not, the drive manufacturer diagnostic will show this. I have probably replaced at least 30 hard drives in the past year with SMART failures, a couple because of outright failures, but most often because the person called me about “slowness.”

There is merit in almost all of the other answers covered in the article, at least in some instances:

RAM can be a reason, at least for Windows XP. With the growing of the Windows kernel, growth of .Net applications, and larger antivirus programs- there was a time when upgrading a XP computer with 128M to 256M made it into a speed demon, and then it was 256M to 512M, and in the last couple of years you could hardly do anything with a 512M system unless you uninstalled the antivirus. So for those still on XP, you need 768M-1G to be able to run as well as you could in the past. So RAM, combined with updates and perhaps some programs they really want, has at times been an issue.

Though not for slowdowns themselves, reformat/reinstalls are often necessary for consumer PCs that have become badly infected (usually the antivirus is long expired) because even after rooting out the virus(es), the firewall/security center/antivirus/windows update services are usually toast; sometimes the Windows fix-its work; more successful is merging in the registry service entries from a healthy Windows machine; occasionally none of that works. Sometimes it is clear from the task manager that something viral is happening which no malware tool is able to identify. And sometimes even after cleaning up a mess, especially on an XP machine, it is clear that the system is running nowhere near what a cleanly-installed machine of its type should do. In that instance, if a hard disk diagnostic and the event viewer give no clues, a registry cleaner can help. I had one instance of a registry cleaner (I think it was jv16 power tools) cleaning and compacting the registry to less than a third of its original size and a tremendous improvement in speed. That avoided a reformat in that instance, but others have not been so fortunate. But the average PC user does very little customization and installs few commercial programs on their machine, so the backup/reformat/reinstall process is almost always quicker than the process I had used to come to that point.

My base of Windows 8 customers is admittedly rather small (probably about 30 out of 1000) and understandably my Apple customers are even less (about 5); but since Windows 8 came out, I have removed 2 viruses from Macs and 0 viruses from Windows 8 computers running Windows Defender.

The original post says “She is now required to enter an Outlook password before the computer will boot up,” I wonder if this has anything to do with the Microsoft Outlook program. If she created a Microsoft account (as Windows 8 has you do unless you click around it), she probably now has an email address that ends with “@outlook.com” This is part of Microsoft’s ongoing, confusing way of using the same terms to cover different things. You can log in to this email address by going to http://www.outlook.com, or http://www.hotmail.com, or http://www.live.com and lo, and behold, the screen will say “Outlook.” So if this is what has happened, the Outlook program is not on her computer.

If she has forgotten her password, the easiest way to fix is to go to another computer (or other device that can go online), try to log in at one of the addresses above, and go through the “Can’t access your account” links to reset it online, and then she can log in to Windows.

If she would rather not enter a password every time, she can (after logging in), move the mouse to the upper or lower right corners of the screen to bring out the “charms bar,” then click Settings, then Change PC settings, then go to Users (or “Accounts”) then find the link to “Switch to a local account” (in 8.1 this is hidden; you have to click “Disconnect” on your account in order to bring it up.)

“telling me that I am using an out-of-date browser, and to update it to improve my ‘experience’.”

An ad-based recommendation, and dangerous to take seriously… I have never had a problem ignoring it.

If I have read the thread right, and you have done all the testing you’ve mentioned, there are three possible culprits: the three things that are in common in all your tests:

1. any peripherals or cables you have used in common- be sure that you have used different mouse, keyboard, power cables, etc.
2. your building
3. the user

Believe it or not, I have known users whose own magnetic fields interfere with computer operations… anyway, these can all be tested easily.

Fred, you didn’t mention the option of creating separate standard and administrator accounts and doing your work in the standard account. This isn’t practical with Windows XP, but I have used it as rule (even for myself ) for Vista and 7. Of course, I don’t allow in much anyway… It might be interesting to see if there are any test results to show if this has lessened security problems.

First, forget the memory. 3.2G is the maximum a 32-bit system can address, so most likely the computer has 4G installed. In any case, most of it will be rarely used.

What you haven’t said is what happens when you run the Task Manager, and go to the Processes page. Run it visible on the side, and look at it when the freeze happens. More than likely, the CPU usage will be at or near 100%. You can see then which process or processes are causing the freeze.

I’ve done a lot of data recovery over the years, usually with dying drives… but it sounds like the first piece that needs extra emphasis is that you need to shut down that computer and disconnect the hard drive YESTERDAY. Formatting and re-partitioning do their damage, and decrease the chances of recovery, but your biggest enemy is anything writing to the drive. Windows is always writing to the drive when it runs, and if it has overwritten an important sector even once, the odds are that NO ONE can recover it (and that includes the manufacturers like Seagate and the specialists who claim they can recover data from hard drives at the bottom of the lake). It sounds, though, like the part of the hard drive in question might not have been written to (very much), so I would think you still have good chances of recovering data. I have used GetDataBack (for you the NTFS version) with success most of the time, plus it allows you to image a drive, so if the drive is dying, you have a better chance of recovery before it goes… In one case, where I recovered no directory structures and found only lost files, I found NTFS Undelete was more effective at identifying Office and other files. I haven’t used it enough yet to know if it is overall a better tool, but I would recommend it if you have a lot of Office files. Both of these programs require payment for them to do the whole job.

There is no harm in doing the work yourself, as long as you avoid writing to the drive (my preference would be connecting it to an XP machine), and if the drive is healthy otherwise, you could try one tool after another. However, once you start purchasing programs, you might want to ask yourself if you want to do this often, or if this is a one-shot deal. It could quickly become more economical to take the drive to someone who already has the multiple programs in hand.

I am using Office 2000 Premium on my home machine (running Windows 7). I know that Outlook won’t work right, so I don’t use that, but the other applications seem to work fine, and with the Compatibility download, I haven’t had any problem opening the 2007 version files. So what do I gain by upgrading to another version that requires activation?

I would echo most of Bill’s recommendations, except to prioritize:

SP3 is first. Without it you are not getting all the security updates that your anti-malware programs are assuming are there. Plus, the last time I checked, you couldn’t even load Microsoft Security Essentials until it is installed.

My rule today on RAM in a Windows XP system is this: With SP3 and an antivirus installed, 512M is pokey. Used to be sufficient a few years back, but no more. 768-1024 is ideal. But the rule beyond that iffy. I haven’t seen a machine hurt by more memory (as long as the sticks match), and I have seen some XP machines that seem to load faster with 2G or more (usually ones that have a lot to load), but I’d say less than half of the machines I’ve worked with show any noticeable improvement in regular operation with more than 1G. With the kind of processor you have, I am much less confident it would be an improvement, and I would check to make sure the system isn’t already maxed in memory. One way you might guess at this is by cleaning out the junk startup programs and looking at the task manager. If it is running over 500M in its idle state, it probably would benefit to add more, but I would first try to see if I can trim that down a bit, after installing SP3 and a working antivirus.

A note on Microsoft Security Essentials: it is my choice for Vista and Windows 7 systems (and I’ve fixed many a Windows 8 system by uninstalling the third-party security and re-enabling the Windows Defender), but I have seen XP systems where it doesn’t run well (at various times uses 100% of the CPU for a few minutes, stalling everything else). I would install it cautiously, knowing that I might have to pull it out and go with one of the A’s (Avast, Avira, AVG), though these will nag and confuse some people.

Java is the issue in 90% of the infected computers I fix (about half of them require me removing the hard drive and scanning it on another computer). But it is used in a lot of HP printer software and online games (and I will get calls specifically to fix facebook games, among other things). So in most cases, I remove all installations (including anything that says JRE or JSE) and then install the latest version, telling people to always upgrade when it asks.

Finally, your primary business software is the driving force, not the hardware (or operating system). It matters little how long XP is supported; just a few months ago I walked in a shop that was running Lantastic and a DOS-based program, that, quite frankly, appears to be as good or better than the expensive stuff out now. I was called in once to help a daycare upgrade their computers: four new computers they purchased, with Vista 64-bit. The first thing we did was call the company that supplied their primary software and found that upgrading to the newest version was going to cost considerably more than the 4 computers, and after pushing them a bit, they eventually told us that they were not 64-bit compatible (yet). Fortunately, the computer boxes were not yet opened, and made their return to the store.

You mentioned Firefox, MSE, and Windows Updates, but you forgot to mention the important ones: if you have Flash or Java on your system. If you have one or both installed, and they are NOT up-to-date (Flash is currently 11.4.402.278, Java is either 6r35 or 7r7), I would uninstall them, remove any vestiges of them (especially look for Adobe, Macromed, Sun, or Oracle in the AppData or Application Data folders), and then reinstall them if you need them.