All kind of app craziness - Excel & Outlook 2010, Firefox

Hi all,

I recently bought a Win 8 box and all seemed to be going well for the first few days. Since then, several of my apps have started acting weird - eg, crashing upon launch, hanging, not responding for a minute or two and then coming back t life.

Unfortunately, Windows Update is also unresponsive no matter how I try to launch it, so I can't tell what problems are due to a lack of updates.

I'm starting to pull my hair out as less and less works on the new box.

Any suggestions (aside from a wig)?

Thanks!
CarCar