Back up, and I give Microsoft some good marks here. After typing the above, I considered what else was noted in recent operation. Last night I also updated Acrobat Professional (The Industry strength Acrobat) to 7.0.9. I noted the update, for reasons yet unknown, of Acrobat required my back-up drive "F" be on line, it was not powered up on my restart of the desk-top environment. So, I decided to power down "F" and try again to reboot the notebook. It booted this time. Now for good marks for Microsoft, XP Home kept a record that it had a "serious boot problem" and asked if I wanted to report to Microsoft, I did, and that returned their biref help statement which confirmed the external hard drive as a possible source of the problem, they of course didn't know anything about the Acrobat update. Hope this helps others. No, I hope no one else has this problem, even though I got it "fixed" (hope so) in about 10 minutes.

I get the paid version of Windows Secrets and I would guess you are talking about the article on Windows Genuine Advantage? They should be called on the carpet for making us continue to go through that over and over it is ridiculous, make us do it once and be done with it. I did not see any mention of this last patch Tuesdays updates causing any problems, they do mention the patches for IE and their importance. I have only seen on a few forums some very minor issues but none like this 98 thing. I have run this windows 98 issue by a few MS MVP's and no one has seen or hear of it happening and all want to know the outcome so please arkie62 keep us posted on what you do and your outcomes please. For those who want to view the latest windows secrets here is the link, this however will not contain the paid content, it is an excellent newsletter and well worth subscribing to whether the pay or free version. Here is a link that might be useful: windows secrets newsletter

Not really, haven't seen any symptoms like that listed anywhere! This is a very strange problem, there are lots of people having this problem even before upgrading to Windows 10 (even back as far as Windows XP). I think that it happening after you installed Windows 10 was just a coincidence. My Touch Screen on my Acer Tablet stopped working shortly after installing Windows 10. Ended up being a Loose Flat Flex Cable inside the Tablet, not Windows 10, but my first thought was Windows 10 had caused it! I'll keep looking to see if I can find anything else. Most of what I'm finding are taking me down the same path, Monitor (Display) Settings. Guess I'll steer away for going down that path for now. I do have one other thought: Maybe your Power Supply is going bad and it's not producing enough power to run the computer and the monitor both! Only real way to check this is to replace the Power Supply with a New one. There are ways to check them (if you're an electrician and have the equipment and knowhow)! I don't think it's the Hardware inside the Laptop or the Monitor wouldn't work on Battery Power! BTW, you can pick up new power supplies on Ebay at not too many $$$$.

"The only time I really notice is I spend my evenings on Facebook....and as the evenings come to an end....around 10 or so, I notice that it takes forever to change pages" Is it still slow if you restart the browser? ...the computer? If it is still slow, have you tried running a speed test to see if you're bandwidth is dropping about that time of night?Compare your bandwidth when pages are loading quickly, then again after they slow down. I use these sites but there are many others: Open Speed Test,Speed Smart and Speed Test If your bandwidth is the bottleneck, blocking ads might help, at least a little bit. Ads (plentiful on Facebook) do use bandwidth as well as computer resources. This is my newest computer. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FQ5WNTS Specs seemed decent for a non gaming computer. I bought it for my Linux. It was/is quite quick booting and running Linux on the SSD I put in it. But as it came, it seemed painfully slow booting into Windows. After moving Windows onto a cheap SSD, it was like a whole different machine. Now Windows boots and runs as quick as Linux. I'm not saying an SSD would help in your case. But if it's not your bandwidth causing the problem, it might make the computer faster in other respects. I have a 10 or more year old Acer in my bedroom with an SSD and it runs okay. Plenty good for browsing and watching videos. BTW, if you don't have an actual "credit" card (or the cash) or would just like to spread the hurt out a little bit without incurring interest and have had Amazon Prime for awhile you might be able to find one for "5 monthly payments". Here's a nice little Acer for $419.99 or 5 payments of $84. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R8WK8VP/ Comes with Windows on an SSD, like it (IMHO) should. It should be plenty fast for a casual user.