If PC is sometimes slow, this may be the problem

[Hawkeye249]

My notebook described above sporadically slowed to a crawl.

Core I7 with 12 megs and plenty of HD space.

Did all of the usual things, included full security scan, clear cache, defrag, ran diagnostics,

used either Chrome or Edge, all Windows updates applied.

FRUSTRATED - but finally figured it out!

The slow downs were occurring when a Windows update was downloading.

A setting was providing maximum bandwidth to the download - which slowed everything else.

And, since I had set to allow updates to download at any time, they were unpredictable!

If this sounds familiar to you, recommend checking the following:

Settings, Update & Security, Delivery Options, Advanced Options -----------

My PC had Absolute Bandwidth selected.  If yours has this setting,

Select Percentage of Bandwidth.

There are two sliders below that which must be set.

I used the recommended setting of 45 percent for background tasks

and 90 percent for foreground tasks.

If you're having a slow down problem, I hope that helps you!

[WAWood]

@Hawkeye249 

Had you come here with this, like I tell everyone else -- I would have told you it was most likely Windows Update doing it.

But these updates are hardly "unpredictable" as MS has established the policy of Patch Tuesday -- in which they post patches to the OS during Tuesday, Redmond time.  Any time you boot after that, you are likely to get the updates.

Also, yesterday was the Second Tuesday of the month and on this day, and the Tuesday, is when MS posts their major patches.  The other Tuesdays are usually minor security patches.