Started with slow Chrome startup, now Explorer keeps crashing

[CSophie]

I have a host of problems that have snowballed on my Lenovo laptop with Windows 10 (installed a few months ago).

At first, it was just that Google Chrome wouldn't launch, or would take about 15-20 minutes to launch after clicking on it. Then my cursor started freezing for periods of about 20-30 seconds at a time (did a virus scan at this point, nothing found). Then Internet Explorer stopped launching. Then whenever I right-clicked on a folder in Explorer, it would freeze, and selecting "End Task" would result in a black screen, and the only thing I could do was Ctrl/Alt/Delete and shutdown. At this point, I can basically only use Office on the laptop (still seems to save OK thank goodness). This all happened last night, right before I needed to go to bed, so I didn't have time to do further investigating. I will do later.

In the meantime, I would be HUGELY grateful if anyone has any idea what might be causing this, and if it sounds like a problem that'll require taking the laptop in for repair rather than trying to sort it out from my end. Starting to wonder if I made a huge mistake accepting Window's offer of the 10 upgrade

 

[Trouble]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
The first thing you need to do, immediately, is back up all your critical data to an external resource, even if you have to burn it to a DVD.
It sounds to me like a couple other forum members problems that were later determined to be a failing hard disk drive.
After you've secured your critical data run the native Check Disk utility.
Right click the start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) and in the command prompt windows type
chkdsk C: /R
hit enter
answer "Y" when prompted
hit enter
type
exit
hit enter
reboot the computer
Let it finish all five stages, this will take a long time to complete so be patient.
After the automatic reboot upon completion check the event viewer for the results
Open event viewer
Expand Windows Logs
Select Application (logs)
From the menu bar select action and then find and type
chkdsk
Click Find next
look at the bottom section in under the General tab scroll down and look for any reference to bytes in bad sectors.

 

[CSophie]

Heya, thank you for responding - the problems *appear* to have been fixed with a system restore, but I'll keep a note of your advice if they come back!