Windows 7 running slow in normal mode

I’ve been dealing with a massive headache with my laptop all week. Everything was running smoothly during the afternoon, but by the evening, the whole thing just crawled to a halt. The weird part is that the slowdown only happens in normal mode; once I boot into Safe Mode, it actually performs normally. Beyond just being incredibly sluggish, the machine keeps freezing up entirely, forcing me to do a hard shutdown using the power button. Since this laptop is my livelihood, I’m currently stuck working exclusively in Safe Mode just to stay functional.
Can anyone help me figure out what's causing this and how to fix it?

The Windows installation is genuine.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Looks like you've piled up a ton of junk... maybe there's even a virus in there somewhere. Have you thought about running a scan with Norton or Malwarebytes?

The scans finally wrapped up, and naturally, I ran them in Safe Mode too. Nothing came up—no viruses, no nothing. So, what else could be causing this?

A few days back, I went through with a disk cleanup and ran CCleaner, which managed to clear out a few gigs, but the sluggishness hasn't budged.

I'm looking at Task Manager and there's this one entry called system Idle Process. It’s sitting there hogging 99% of my CPU usage, and the description says it represents the percentage of time the processor is not busy. Could this actually be the reason why everything feels so sluggish?

Try right-clicking that item and ending the process—then see how the computer reacts.

So, I gave it a shot, but no luck. It keeps throwing an error saying the procedure couldn't be completed and that the action isn't applicable to this specific process.

granitefalcon3 said:So, I gave it a shot, but no luck. It keeps throwing an error saying the procedure couldn't be completed and that the action isn't applicable to this specific process.

For me, that system Idle Process sits somewhere between 60% and 100% CPU usage, but honestly... it doesn't even seem to slow things down much.

Larry Ortiz5 said:Try right-clicking that item and ending the process—then see how the computer reacts.

In the American version, "that process" is called system Idle Process.🍿

Jack James65 said:For me, that system Idle Process sits somewhere between 60% and 100% CPU usage, but honestly... it doesn't even seem to slow things down much.

Yebigasad... missed your post...
So your system Idle Process is "using 60% to 100% of the processor but nothing's wrong," you say? That must be one hell of a computer.

granitefalcon3 said:So, I gave it a shot, but no luck. It keeps throwing an error saying the procedure couldn't be completed and that the action isn't applicable to this specific process.

That process isn't actually "taxing" your CPU; its whole job is to show you how much "processor capacity" is sitting idle and doing nothing. So, it's basically the exact opposite of a heavy load. Don't even sweat that one—just sort by percentage and watch the other entries. If you see something jumping up to 40% out of nowhere, that's usually where the trouble starts. That's your red flag for malware.
While you're at it, check your Task Manager startup tab. There’s probably a bunch of useless junk running there, especially since everything works fine in Safe Mode.
If you run into some shady little process like "hpui," you might find it won't let you kill it, or it just pops right back up after you end it. That’s exactly how malicious software behaves. When that happens, you need to figure out what's driving it. Usually, the move is to clean things up or delete files while in Safe Mode so the virus can't jump back up during a normal boot.

Cleaning out "junk files" from your hard drive won't actually speed things up. You were just clearing out stuff that takes up space, not stuff hogging your active RAM. You really need to dig into those processes and isolate the suspicious ones that are being extra active...

Michael Jackson10 said:That process isn't actually "taxing" your CPU; its whole job is to show you how much "processor capacity" is sitting idle and doing nothing. So, it's basically the exact opposite of a heavy load. Don't even sweat that one—just sort by percentage and watch the other entries. If you see something jumping up to 40% out of nowhere, that's usually where the trouble starts. That's your red flag for malware.
While you're at it, check your Task Manager startup tab. There’s probably a bunch of useless junk running there, especially since everything works fine in Safe Mode.
If you run into some shady little process like "hpui," you might find it won't let you kill it, or it just pops right back up after you end it. That’s exactly how malicious software behaves. When that happens, you need to figure out what's driving it. Usually, the move is to clean things up or delete files while in Safe Mode so the virus can't jump back up during a normal boot.

Cleaning out "junk files" from your hard drive won't actually speed things up. You were just clearing out stuff that takes up space, not stuff hogging your active RAM. You really need to dig into those processes and isolate the suspicious ones that are being extra active...

...

(deleted - missed that you already provided the explanation regarding why this is likely a process issue)

dang it, my English is just terrible 🙏