Question W7 - Programs Keep Crashing

[James5534]

Hello, for the past few months I've been having awful problems with my web browser crashing. I was thinking it was isolated to that, but recently other programs are crashing also. I've been having games crash, VLC player and any browser I use.
Browsers I've tried:
Brave (chromium based browser)
-I get unresponsive pages that need to be reloaded
-I get "Aw, snap" error message
-The browser simply closes itself (this is most common)
Firefox
-I get unresponsive pages
-The browser crashes and I get a windows 7 error "Firefox has stopped working"
Pale Moon (firefox based browser)
-The same issues as firefox

In the past year, I've upgraded my RAM, CPU, PSU and motherboard. Though my GPU is very outdated (GTX 660)
I've been racking my brain trying to fix this issue.
Some things that I've tried include:
-Running chkdsk
-Windows memory test
-Disc defrag
-Scanning with Malwarebytes, CCleaner, Spybot search and destroy, Avast virus scan, and more recently switching to Bitdefender virus scan
-I've tried to make sure all drivers are up to date, even using Driver Booster 6 to check my drivers
-Checked my temps (20-25 degrees Celsius on average on all hardware, 30 absolute max)
-Tried moving programs from my C: Drive to my E: Drive

I have no idea what else to do. I really don't want to do a fresh Windows 7 install since I've gotten all the settings just the way I like them and it'd be very stressful trying to sort them all out again.
I'd really appreciate any help on this.
Thanks.

 

[Grobe]

Well - Microsoft have said they drop the support for W7 about a year from now, so if you're using that computer to internet activities - trying to keep settings forever is hopeless.

Except from that (pretending that isn't a problem) - you want to know if this is a software issue or hardware related problem.

I assume you already have done a bounch of possible hardware test, but let's assume the hardware is ok. One way to check this is to run another OS, preferably one that you doesn't have to install over any existing installatio - and this is where Linux Live-CD comes into the picture.

You can download such an iso file, burn it on CD, then make the computer boot onto it, and it launches a fully functional (write protected of course) Linux OS. Linux Mint can be recommended. On that same CD, Memtest86+ should be included as a boot option in case you want to do several test on your ram.

Then, when the computer is running the Linux Live-CD (or from a usb stick), you should try using web browser,and office app for a while to see how it responds (clearly, usb or CD/DVD is slow mediums so it will run slower than from a harddrive or ssd).
So if the computers runs fine, that would be a very strong indication that points to a bad/corrupted windows installation.

The only DANGEROUS THING here, is that - if you happens to find that os so attractive that you ditch Windows in the future, by not buying Window 10 since that is the only option if you want to continue using Windows.
(sorry - I'm a Linux user myself, so I couldn't resist writing that)