Frozen Windows 10 and cant find restore point i created

[Susan Leone]

All of a sudden 5 days ago my Dell Latitude E6400 running Windows 10 started freezing, or once the cursor did manage to activate its target, the response took literally minutes. I have been doing the websearch thing and trying lots of stuff to no avail. I tried a system reset, but it failed. I had created a system restore point, but now all I get for my search is "how to restore in windows 7" -- it does not even bring up the possibility of my current system. I tried a microsoft solution on one of the threads about slow/freezing windows 10, but could not get to the place where i could change a driver setting as suggested. (I am running as an Admin, I hope!) This computer was given to me 4 months ago, so I have no disks/documentation. I am so confused, and you can see i am not technically experienced, so any response needs to be simple, please. (and i realize that might mean i can't get help here!)

 

[Trouble]

Hello Susan and welcome to the forum.
First of all, do you have another computer you can use that works reasonably well?
I ask because you say....

This computer was given to me 4 months ago, so I have no disks/documentation.

AND
You will probably need the installation media to do much of anything going forward.
You can obtain the Windows 10 ISO from here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
Just select Windows 10 from the top option, your language and then the bit version that is appropriate for your system architecture 32 or 64 bit.
Once you have the ISO, you can use ImgBurn to burn it to a DVD or Rufus to burn it to a USB ThumbDrive, either of which you can use to then.....
attempt an in-place upgrade / repair install. Upgrading Windows 10 by installing it over top of itself.
There is a pretty good article here https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/ just ignore the first couple paragraphs where they are promoting their repair products and scroll down to the meat of the article.

This is a relatively simple and straight forward task and is generally non-destructive (all your data, programs, drivers, etc., should remain intact and unharmed), but.....
Personally I would still have a backup of my critical data, as well as a disk image, so I could recover in the event of some unforeseen problem.

 

[Susan Leone]

yes, i think i can do this! and yes, i have a chromebook, so i can download what i need via usb. will report back when i have tried this. THANKS!

 

[Susan Leone]

`It is now 12 hours later, and not only did my computer start behaving the instant I started this thread, but also it is still fine this morning! I will save the instructions in this thread, though. Meanwhile, WINDOWS wants to install an update for a malicious software removal tool. Should I allow it? I ask because so often in these threads I've seen "so, after the update my problem started," or "so, the update stalled 9 timees," etc...ADVICE please and thanks you.

 

[davehc]

The malicious software removal tool is a legit MS program which comes periodically in the updates. It should have downloaded and installed automatically.
Its purpose is to run a quick scan, unobtrusively, when you are nor using the computer..

 

[Susan Leone]

thanks. and i am still delighted and confused that my laptop healed itself!!! ???