Multiple Computers - Performance Issues - HELP Please!

I have a really odd set of computer troubles to put forthfor you, a family of computers, if you will.

Some of them are in PA, some down here in Texas.

They range from Win 7 to Win 8.1, desktops and laptops and, I think, most of them are HP. T

They range from less than 6 months old to about 4 years old.

Most of them seem to have developed these issues right around the time when the pesky Win 10 blue box began to appear, about a month or so now.

One computer, my mother-in-law, is practically brand new, about a month and half old and she too, is having issues.

The worst was my Dad’s, his got stuck in the middle of a Windows update and would never get out of the recovery/repair loop and would never boot back in to Windows 8.1.

Finally got in to a recover screen and finally got it to back up his documents by selecting just them but could never get it to back up his pics, no matter what method we tried. No disc, no external hard drive, no flash drive would get it to work.

Finally, an HP tech, after several days of calls with them,had Dad reseat (?) his ram card(s) and then they either had him, or the system forced him to do a factory reinstall.

Needless to say, unless someone knows how to do it, we think all of Dad’s photos are lost?

Within the same week or so, either shortly before or after Dad’s catastrophe, we all began to have issues with our computers, either during or shortly after Windows updates or when that darned blue box began to continually appear to inform us that the Wonderful Win 10 was available – Free – to us.


Now, as far as I know, none of us shared any files between another, so I don’t think there was any type of virus shared between us.

We all use our computer in different states and in different ways and, of course, everyone is looking to me for advice, so here I am.

I will focus mostly on our HP laptop and mom’s new HP desktop. The issues are all pretty similar though for all of us.

Dad had purchased Vipre – a bonus 10 pack for all of us, BUT the issues were present before that and only 3 of the computers now have it installed. Dad hasn’t installed it yet, the HP folks reactivated his trial of MCafeedoodle, I think, and he is waiting until I speak with you all before installing it.

Our HP laptop had Malwarebytes and defender installed and I constantly, several times a day, ran scans. I became very insistent on that after someone hacked in to my checking account. Weird though, I have never actually used my checking account numbers online, so the bank assumed that someone was using a run-through of a series of checking account numbers. Anyhow, since the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] week ofApril, I have ran scans like crazy and hadn’t seen anything unusual come up, so I’m “assuming” our laptop was safe.

I reserved a copy of Win 10, wishing now that I hadn’t.

Mom has not reserved. Only my niece did the upgrade and she had to downgrade because some of her college photography software has issues and the professor said he work with her over Christmas break to upgrade everything.

So, we all keep getting the annoying Blue box of Happy 10, none of us want it and we are all being plagued with sluggish/freezing/and unresponsive computers.

Mom’s computer came with Win 8.1, our laptop started out with Win 8 but we upgraded awhile back to Win 8.1. That was a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] attempt at upgrading to Win 8.1 and we’ve pretty much been good since that attempt, with just a few issues with Time Warner on their endof the internet providing, but other than that, nothing major.

Our laptop is usually wireless in our house, mom’s is cabled to her router.

We are all getting a constant go-round of internet explorer has stopped working.

Our laptop has 2 user accounts, hubby and myself and Mom’s has 1 user (like all the other computers).

Mom and hubby have MSN as their homepage, I have the google search box as mine.

I don’t think that any extra google add-ons have been installed.

Hubby seems to be getting the most trouble with sign-on screens and general internet searching. I

n particular, the Walmart Savings Catcher sign-on screen. It will just freeze up on him but yet, if we switch to my login, I can usually get it to sign in and enter receipts.

Mom has the same issue.

Hubby also seems to have trouble with the Time Warner and TXU sites, they are very slow toswitch pages and load. Since they are that way on my log-in, I am wondering if it is just their sites?


We all are getting the internet explorer has stopped working thing and the box appears searching for a resolution but we never get anything as far as a resolution. We end up either with a frozen computer or a computer that has slowed down to a turtle crawl.

At times, like earlier when I tried to actually 1[SUP]st[/SUP] post this, you hit a submit button or a link to go to a new page and just a blank white internet page appears.

The tab at the top will have the name of the page you have been on or a waiting for but usually when this happens, nothing ever shows up but the white screen or but nothing ever shows up.

Mom uses her computer for very little: E-mail, facebook and bill paying and, since she likes solitaire, she ended up having to use the new version out of the Microsoft store. She doesn’t like it as well as the Win 7 version but she would be ok with it, except for the fact that it has issues.

Sometimes, it opens, plays and closes fine. A lot of the time, it crawls open, the cards move very slowly and then it takes a long time to close.

We have noticed the same sort of thing with what we use on our computer,programs such as Microsoft office – 2010, facebook, e-mail, just about everything.

She doesn’t usually use the tile/charm screen but rather the desktop side. Hubby and I do bounce back and forth between. We have installed somephotography things from the Store and also the solitaire game version that Mom uses.

We noticed that switching back and forth between the tile/charm and the old-fashioned desktop can be a big issue. Sometimes, it goes wonderfully. Other times, it hangs up. Sometimes, you see a blue circle spinning, other times, it just moves very slowly.

Switching between users on ours can be a real problem as well. Same sort of thing, slow crawl or just a freeze up that lasts for many minutes.


We’ve all had the times when the computer literally stops and after, say a half hour or so, still hasn’t done anything and we end up power it off by the power button rather than the standard power icon that should show upon the right hand side of the screen.

There have been times when even that, using the restart or shut down ends up slowing down or stopping altogether.

I hardly ever see the windows can’t close because this or that program is open,unless I’ve been using Office and it hung up during that. Sometimes, it will let me go back to what isopen and close it. Sometimes, it goes very slow through that and at times, forget it. You just have to power button it off.

I’ve noticed some facebook games move slower than they usedto but not all of them. No rhyme or reason, not all the time.

During windows updates, or shortly after, we've all noticed a real slow-down and restart or shut down issues or even just in using the computers at all. At first, I thought it was because of the updates and maybe they were still kind of installing stuff in the background or something but should this sort of thing still occur for days and several shutdowns or restarts later?

A restart or start sometimes just gives us a this grey like screen, like it the system is taking a very long time to get to the start screen where you can either chose the user (on ours) or just log-in (on Mom's).

Sometimes, I have seen my desktop screen come up with nothing but the background picture. None of my icons show up, nothing on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. No Blue E, no internet signal bar, no speaker icon. Nothing.

2 times, I've had all of my icons totally rearranged. 1 Time, I restarted computer and they came back as before. Another time, maybe 3 restarts and they were still all messed up so I went in and put them back like I wanted on the desktop and then went in and told it not to rearrange them when changing windows themes. Though I did have it set like that way months ago.

We've watched the Vipre scans and only 1 time did I notice a slow-down during a scan and I was running the full scan at the time. It doesn't appear like the quick scan has an effect when I know it is running.

Vipre hasn't tossed back any virus, just some tracking threats and 2 software patches - 1 for a flashplayer and 1 to manage the Happy Win 10 box. Haven't touched that Win 10 one yet and for the flashplayer, I actually went in and installed the whole new latest version that we didn't have installed.


We all have switched our windows updates to never check for updates and then,during the weekend, we manually check and install. Seems that pesky Win 10 keeps popping up andI keep hiding the update but it keeps coming back.

We are all getting tired of the blue spinning circle, the unpredictability, the constant having to watch the updates for Win 10. I am extremely frustrated that both a very fast laptop and a new desktop have suddenly been reduced to little more functionality than my old 98 HP desktop at any given time.

I’m really tired of husband saying – come here and I find either a blank white screen, him showing me that there is no mouse movement and the computer is hanging or him showing me something isn’t working or he can't get it to shutdown.

I'm tired of suddenly being told that I'm not connected to the internet or plain just having to wait patiently for something to happen, Office to open and I'm really frustrated in telling everyone that I simply don't know and don't have an answer for all of this.

Hubby says it is a Microsoft win 10 conspiracy – he insists that they are trying to force us all to update or to think our computers have major issues and that we are being duped into running out and buying new ones.

I told him that his mom has a new one and she is still having troubles.

Our laptop is about out of warranty and the only thing we had to do was send her back in the beginning of the year for a cracked hinge on the screen lid. Even though the fellow when I dropped it off said that I would have to have everything reinstalled, she came back exactly the same as I had dropped her off, except with new casing.

Ours originally came with stickers below the keyboard and around the mouse and from the looks, I think they just replaced the whole housing, not just the hinge.

But I didn't have to reinstall a thing and I thought we were good to go until all of this started.

I don't think our laptop is running hotter than normal, no clicking or grinding noises, and, as far as I know, all of the HP assistant update things have installed normally though I do keep seeing an HP message/reminder in regards to what to know/do and so on when upgrading to Win 10.

I want to scream!

Is it just coincidence that all of these little issues keep occurring daily ever since that pesky win10 appeared or is there really something wrong with all of our computers?

Please advise what to do, Please, please!

I have flashdrive recovery already made for mom’s computer and ours will only us to use our original win 8 set, won't allow us to create another system recovery set with Win 8.1 - says only 1 is allowed.

If I have to, I will reinstall everything but I hope to not come to that on ours. Actually, even on Mom’s even though she has very little, I wouldn’t want to do it. It’s hardly been used yet.

I haven’t done any refreshes, older restore points or anything, yet. I really wanted to get feedback andsuggestions from you all before doing anything at all.

I’m off work this week, so if you all recommend doing any type of reinstall, I guess now would be as good a time as any, though I hate to do it.

Please let me know if you need any specs or software info or anything at all to help. My apologies if I’ve provided too much info but I wanted to try to include everything that might help to give a clue.

Thank you in advance to anyone who steps up to give guidance and thanks for being here for us techno-impaired folk!!!

You truly are appreciated!

OK, the
I noticed on our laptop that I have a lovely white windows flag on the lower right hand side of the screen, near the internet signal and speaker icons.
If I hover the mouse over it, it says Get Windows 10.
I don't want Windows 10, yet. I might consider downloading it to media and using later, if there is a way to do that?
I just don't want it downloading onto my laptop at this time.
I will have to have everyone else in the family check and see if they also have that little white flag.
Don't mind saying that I'm really tired of babysitting the computers. Shouldn't have to do this so darn much, in my humble opinion.

Thanks

Oh my gosh, I swear I have had it with this laptop.
Another one of the odd issues that we've been seeing, all of us family with HP's is where you'll have something open and you'll be clicking - for me it was just the task manager. The darn thing just stops and does nothing. All I wanted to do was to look at the services, startups and such that are listed.
Then, the darn thing made me right click on it to get the pop up screen where the very last choice is close window. Took it awhile but it finally did close it.
Another thing is the annoying need to right click on an icon to get something to run rather than just click on it and it goes. There's a LOT of need to be right-clicking to open things, file folders, programs.
I seriously think that tomorrow I shall attempt to just refresh the whole darn thing - our laptop anyhow and see what happens.
Makes me kind of nervous though, since the darn system would never allow me to make a win 8.1 backup/recovery media.
I've read the great tutorial here on how to refresh so that makes me feel a wee bit better but let me tell you, with the way our luck has been going I keep thinking that we might get screwed.
But since I've not had any replies back yet, being the weekend and all, and being that we become so frustrated...I guess I feel like that is our final option.
Excedrin migraine please?

Aleve works better.

It sounds like there is something running in the background that is hogging CPU resources. Is there any bittorrent downloading done on any of these machines? If so, have these files been shared between machines? It could be a virus, though for you all to get the same one unless youve been sharing files is pretty slim. Sometimes bittorent programs come with programs built into them that do bitcoin mining and can cause problems like that. uTorrent has been known to do this for a while now.