My Windows 8 Laptop  purchased new with Win 8 Pro 64 Bit installed by Lenovo in Feb 2013.   First thing I did was remove Norton AV and installed GFI Vipre then office and install updates.   System has run perfect, fast , responsive etc...  Last two days system is so slow.  I run task manager and nothing is hogging CPU .       I have automatic updates enabled last updated 7/17 .... maybe issue is there.

The UI is just not responsive , opening windows, clicking on an item is not responsive. Select a window in background, and it takes several seconds 5 to 10 for it to become visible. Rt click on item and blue waiting circle appears. Keyboard not vey responsive either.  I originally though culprit was Automatic maintenance but I left system alone overnight and it completed, but it is still slow

I attempt a system restore to automatic restore point created day before slow down occurred (system ran fine day after restore point) and it says system too busy to complete process.

Specs  Lenovo W530  i7   24 GB RAM   1TB HD   16GB SD for cache   Intel  on board video and NVidia discrete video

I am trying to run MalwareBytes scanner, but it too is super slow.

I really do not want to have to restore an image I created  in Feb after I installed Office, as I am thinking there has to be a solution to this.

What diagnostics could I possibly run to detect what is causing this Slooow down.

- Lou

Run Windows Update and install all updates and then restart your PC.

Run a system clean up and remove unnecessary items.

Make a xperf trace to see the cause.

Install the WPT (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4847.install-the-windows-performance-toolkit-wpt-en-us.aspx), open a CMD prompt with admin rights and type this:

xperf -start perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer && timeout -1 && xperf -stop perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer GeneralTrace.etl

after you captured 30 - 60s of the slowness, go back to CMD prompt and press a key to stop the logging. Now compress the GeneralTrace.etl (only this one, not the kernel and user etl files) as 7z (LZMA2, ULTRA) to reduce the size. Upload this file to your SkyDrive or Dropbox and post a link here.

Thanks... I finally removed apps I had in stalled then left it alone until it complete "maintenance".  Did a reboot and it came back as good as ever.  I have since made an image and have fingers crossed machine behaves itself.