[sil (Steve)]

Me I would check your chrome extensions, They often slow things down, especially when they’ve been disabled by the browser security and you probably have an extension or “helper “bar installed in the browser Google Chrome I’ve never ever liked, Plus Edge does things I dont want it to do (standard mo for Microsoft to know better than users how to use their computers) I switched long ago to Brave browser, has good security built in and no need to a million extensions, built on chrome source but stable and fast, its the only browser on my main machine, I killed off Edge and dont have Firefox anymore as it became too bloated and slow. Still I have good non standard security measure to repel trackers and malware too that you’re not likely to have so you’ve probably got infections. I hope you dont have ransomware which does slow the system down while it goes through encrypting stuff (process intensive) and sends the contents of your computer across the internet to someone else so lack of banwidth will slow your browser startup .

Check window update? It could be downloading a huge service pack or install package for Win11. M$ are *******s for forcing update downloads and install when it wants disregarding your settings choices, The slowdown sounds like a huge network traffic event, could be legit but could also be malicious. Task manager can show you if you have a lot of network traffic when you dont expect any, also check for processes begged at 100%. So many horrid possibiilities and you really should be checking every possibility. If you see a lot of network traffic but you dont expect any, check windows update, otherwise unplug physically from the internet, then take steps to scan your whole system for viruses and spyware etc. (on another clean computer you can download from PortableApps (virus and spyware scanners)install to thumbdrive and run them to at least grab latest updates for them then go scan slow machine fully, will take a long time, but if someone is encrypting your machine or downloading its contents is it more inconvenient to you they get information needed to access your bank account? Assume the worst mate unfortunately. Maybe the event viewer can help point direction but if youre network is being used or hammered thats something you need to isolate first, youre machine could have been infected long ago and made part of a zombie botnet waiting for c&c instructions. A big failing in people with regards to cyber security is they assume a virus is immediately obvious, but gone are the days when infections do stuff straight away,, these days they often open the door for installing and giving access to a Ton of other stuff. Could be mining cryptocurrencies for someone. Increasingly they just sit and have a couple of communication lines open for C&C to tell your machine what to do. These zombie botnets are more profitable for the attackers as they are a weapon to sell when needed, they arent always being used. So maybe someone bought botnet access to attack Russia or Ukraine and your computer is a part of whatever that attack is?
If I was in front of your computer i would:
1- check network activity
2- virus/malware scan system
3 install brave and uninstall chrome,
then maybe do some prevention measures and other investigations but by this point I’d working towards wiping the system and reinstalling from scratch because no matter what you think you’ve cleaned your are likely to have various infections and just Windows itself needs a reinstall every couple of years as it doesn’t clean up after itself and slow naturally anyway. In other words, take off and nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be certain.