System running really slow

[Syftelurth]

Hello, this isn't really a thread for me, but for a friend, but I'm more technologically aware than he is, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Recently, my friend's computer has been running really slowly, but in a weird way.
When he uses an internet browser, or even Windows explorer, it will often load over a large duration, much longer than usual (about a minute for every website he visits, or every folder he opens).
Sometimes his clicks will not register, and his Skype perpetually freezes, on and off.

We don't know when this started happening exactly, because we've been trying to fix it ourselves for about 4 days straight.
What we have figured out so far:

• 
  ■We used several tools to figure out that none of his hardware is faulty.
  ■He noticed that the keyboard icon for Language settings was appearing and disappearing every 5 seconds, and his Skype would also freeze the second it disappeared, and then unfreeze when it appeared.
  ■When we tried to restore back to a Restore Point, we found out he didn't actually have any Restore Points set up, so that's out of the question too.
  ■Starting up is generally pretty fast, it starts being slow the second he logs into his PC.

I personally have had this problem before, and never ended up fixing it.
I can tell from experience that restoring back to factory defaults didn't even solve my problems, and I ended up getting a new PC.

I hope you all can help us fix this problem, and we'll be as cooperative as we can.
Cheers!

 

[sDGam]

Try opening the task manager and watch if cpu,ram or hard drive go 100% when doing one what u mentioned above. If so, one of these is bottlenecking the system and is probably damaged.
Also dust in the cpu heatstink could be making the cpu overheat and perform badly or even damage it.
Last, some virus could cause the problem. Try doing a fresh windows install to see if it fixes anything.

Experts in this forum could help you more.

 

[Syftelurth]

We're going to try to start up in Safe Mode now (which we should've done long ago probably), and post back on the results of that.

@sDGam: Nothing out of the ordinary on task manager, once it actually opens.
We just recently cleaned his PC out, so that's probably not it.
We did an Avast start-up scan, which didn't yield any results, so it's probably not a virus either.
Doing a fresh install will be our last resort, if nothing else works.