Slow performance and freezing issues

So, here’s the deal: every single time I shut down my laptop, I have to restart it literally five times before it finally behaves. Windows boots up and the desktop icons show up, but the first four attempts just freeze completely—I can't click on anything. It’s bizarre because it’s always that fifth try that actually works perfectly. This has been happening for over six months now. Given that the laptop is about 5 or 6 years old, is it about to kick the bucket? What do you think the issue is, and is it worth trying to swap out parts, or should I just start saving up for a new one?

Yeah, something’s definitely off. You really ought to take it to a repair shop so they can take a look. To actually figure anything out, you’re going to need to be more specific—what kind of laptop is it, what are the specs, what version of macOS are you running, and what kind of background software (antivirus, etc.) do you have installed? We also need you to run some diagnostics if we’re ever going to pin down the actual issue.

But honestly, based on how you’re treating this thing (it’s been lagging like crazy for six months and you won't even... 🤷), I'm guessing you're just an end-user who isn't interested in tinkering, which is why I suggested a pro. It's stupid to just let a laptop "run until it dies." If you do that, besides the potential repair bill (assuming it's even fixable), you'll most likely lose every single file you have on there. Permanently.

The first thing you should have done, like, yesterday, is back up everything important to an external hard drive or some cloud storage.

Looking into my crystal ball here, my best guess is that your hard drive is failing and is about to give up the ghost entirely. That said, it could also be something relatively "simple" like needing a fresh install of macOS or a disk defrag...

If you've got the cash, the smartest move is just to buy a new one. At five or six years old, that machine is reaching its expiration date anyway. You could always take the old one to a local shop just to get a formal diagnosis...