Hello all, I found this page through reddit and was hoping to find some support or at least point me in the right direction.
Yesterday, my computer started behaving extremely strangely. The primary "stange behavior" are my taskbar and windows becoming 'non-responsive' accompanied by slow or delayed response times from simple things such as trying to close windows or open the right click menu. Open windows, browsers, and apps aren't crashing or freezing, they seem to be operating fine (applications continue to run, if a video in youtube is open it will continue to play, and I am getting no error or warnings or "Not Responsive"s on Task Manager) I just cannot interact with them, as if my mouse becomes unresponsive. I have tried swapping my mouse out also, though, so I don't believe it is a mouse issue.
This happens both sporadically and consistantly in that, its been happening consistantly since yesterday, but sometimes this "unresponsiveness" happens every couple of minutes or only once or twice an hour, but sporadically in that its hard to tell what triggers it or just when its going to go "unresponsive." The only solution I have found to temporarily alleviate the issue is to restart the computer or SOMETIMES just opening the task manager will bring functionality back temporarily. When the "unresponsiveness" starts, I can open my windows menu, but clicking icons there seems to do nothing (however, oddly enough I can navigate and use the menu using my keyboard). I can only restart via the CTL + ALT + DEL menu. After restarting, the problem starts to come back within a few minutes again.
I have turned off all startup services through my task manager, but I don't know what else to do to troubleshoot the issue. When I run my system in safe mode, things seem to operate normally, except for my mouse which I guess cannot work in safe mode, so the extent of what I can test in safe mode is limited.
Some info about my systen:
I am running Windows 10.0.19045, Intel i710700K CPU, Nvidia Geforce 3070Ti with 32gb of ram. I have had this computer for about 3 or 4 years, with little to no issues whatsoever, especially with performance. I haven't upgraded anything lately, but I did add additional ram last year with no issue. When this problem began yesterday, I was not doing anything unusual on my computer, which I use primarily for working, and occasionally gaming. I have not visited any shady or unsual sites, haven't downloaded anything other than some design assets from sites I use regularly and trust. I use my computer for work primarily and working it has become increasingly hard to impossible as I must constantly reset my system every few minutes sometimes.
I did try gaming last night, and everything was generally working fine, but after 20 or so minutes I found that "some" functions stopped working, namely a couple mouse functions, but generally the game was playing well, I just could not use certain buttons on the mouse. Its a complete guess but it felt less a mouse issue and more a system issue. Additionally I have Malware Bytes installed and Windows Defender running. Malware Bytes detected 1 file which it "quarantined" but didn't seem like it was of much concern, and Windows protection says all is clear. I also ran "sfc /scannow" through PowerShell as an admin and it found no errors or integrity violations.
When I began writing this, my computer was fully "responsive" but now it has gone "nonresponsive," though my Chrome browser is currently working fine (sometime Chrome stops too). To me, just now, the "unresponsiveness" started when I opened up my System info to make sure I was giving the correct info and specs, as Windows opened it fine the first time but when I went to go back to reopen it, i am met with an unresponsive search bar, taskbar and unclickable menus.
Another note is that I had installed several cosmetic UI modifications such as TaskbarX, TClock, and Wallpaper engine, but I have them all currently disabled and the problem is persisting.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I rely on my computer as my source of income, and my clients rely on me! I hope I didn't give too much info, just wanted to lay it all out as this is a very weird situation and I have no idea where to begin looking into it. Thank you so much.
