Post making contest 3.0

This is update #166.

I have spent the vast majority of today wrangling with my laptop, with a good three hours where I was very concerned my hard drive was dying, but I am pleased to announce that I have finally figured out what to do in order to make it behave - in fact, it's been performing better in the last half hour than it has in months, quite substantially so. Here's what I have to do:

1. Upon booting up and logging in, immediately stop the "Get Windows 10" service.
   
2. Then, when it runs, immediately stop the Windows Update service.
   
3. That's it - that's all there is to it.
   

This works. I do not know why it works. This is irritating. There is the apparent possibility that I have fallen victim to a known issue with Windows Update that does apparently manifest with the CPU-hogging and constant freezing symptoms I have noted, but I cannot perform the recommended fix because it involves installing a Windows Update. Which I cannot do. Because my Windows Update functionality is broken. But can be fixed. With a Windows Update. That I have to install. With the Windows Update service. Which is broken.

...you know, I think I might have finally been persuaded to upgrade to Windows 10...

End of message.