[Bill14564]

Look at memory usage on the Task Manager; is that above 90%?

When mine have slowed down it has been due to running out of memory. Dozens of programs are trying to run and use memory but there isn't enough. The way the system handles this is to move some of the program out of memory and onto the disk. Then it swaps some of another program off the disk and into memory. It runs a little of the program that is in memory and then moves onto the next program. To make room, it now swaps the current program to disk and retrieves the next one back into memory. This causes the disk usage to hit 100% because it is constantly swapping programs into memory. All this takes time and causes the computer to run slowly.

It is suspicious that this started happening after Dell installed an update. If you were very behind in your Windows updates then that might explain some of it (newer versions use more memory).

It is possible, though not likely, that the Dell update is limiting the amount of memory Windows is allowed to use. For example, your system used to be able to use THIS much but after the update it is only allowed to use this much even though that is less than what is installed. That would be odd but not impossible.

Do you notice any new programs or services running that you didn't use before? Maybe Teams or Skype or some Update Service? These could have been enabled by the update and are now using a lot more memory than before.

You might tell the Task Manager to sort by memory to see if anything is using way too much. Be careful though, Firefox, mail tools, and certain other programs normally use a lot so it is difficult to tell whether they are using more than they should. On my system, Firefox is using 1.8GB, about four times as much as the next highest user and 20 times as much as most other processes.

For me, the rest is mostly magic. I stop some processes that I feel I don't really need and get the system to work reasonably well while I order a new one. Not the best solution perhaps but easier than finding a computer tech to figure out why my ten year old system is running slowly.