Even when all I was doing was typing into a search field, the lag between keystroke and display was amazing and infuriating. The only processes that Task Manager showed as consuming my CPU and Memory were Windows Defender and Google Chrome. I tinkered with the settings for Windows Defender. I installed a free antivirus instead. No change.
It had been like that for weeks. I had stopped using my 3-year-old Dell Inspiron desktop except when absolutely necessary — like for syncing my iPhone, or interacting with a website with a craptacular mobile version, or writing a blog post longer than I’d want to tap out on my smallish Bluetooth keyboard.
Yesterday afternoon, Aaron suggested I try a clean install of Windows. I’d been thinking along those lines myself, so it didn’t take much persuasion. Sure, that meant that the things I’d wanted to get done on my computer would be put off until later (No, I still haven’t finished my 2021 Year In Review) — but, honestly, not much was going to get done, anyway. Not in the state it was in.
It took surprisingly less time and angst than I had thought.
As of late yesterday evening, my computer was back up and running with a clean install of Windows 10 — and was once again bogged down by Defender. BUT! Over the course of today, I installed Google Chrome, WinRAR (to decompress all my saved installer files), my free antivirus of choice, and iTunes — and everything seems to be performing normally again.
I’m going to keep a close eye on things as I reinstall applications over time — I’m looking at you, Adobe Creative Cloud — to see if any one app brings things grinding to a halt again.
Cheaper than buying a new computer, that’s for damn sure.