Some possibilities:

• Traditional HDD bottleneck; an SSD upgrade is the usual fix.
• Too little RAM for current workloads causing constant paging.
• Corrupted system files or services thrashing.
• Background sync (cloud drives) or antivirus scans.
• Thermal throttling reducing CPU clocks.

Need help? Check here: /services/computer-maintenance/

What it might be (likely causes)

• HDD bottleneck
  Spinning disks keep the whole system waiting. If Disk sits near 100% active time in Task Manager, you’re IO‑bound. Upgrade context and practical wins: /posts/speed-up-old-laptop/ and aging patterns: /posts/top-problems-10-year-old-pcs/