Constant Rebooting

[Thor]

I have at least two major problems with my SP3.

First is the constant rebooting. The machine will sometimes reboot three times a day, then will go weeks without rebooting. It reboots during sleep mode. Have not seen it reboot during normal use. Note that it only started going into sleep mode as it should a few days ago. It has been refusing to sleep for months but apparently an update made it possible to sleep again? Note that it will usually return from sleep normally.

Second is the fact that it is incredibly slow. Many tasks in many programs experience keyboard lag, making it difficult to even type. Probably some background tasks interfering because it comes and goes. A core i7 machine shouldn't be this slow. It is very slow on webpages as well, no matter what browser I am using. Chrome, Firefox Quantum and Edge are all slow. I have weekly maintenance set up to defrag the HDs and trim the SSD.

My SP3 is about 3 years old. 256 G SSD, Docking Station, 3 external 1TB HDs, 256 G thumb drive.

Is it possible I need a firmware update? How does one check the status of the FW and/or Bios?

 

[sharpuser]

In the last three years, you have likely updated Windows many times, even perhaps from Windows 8 or Windows 8.1.

I think you need a "Reset" from the Update & Security settings. You can choose the "Keep my files" option.

 

[Thor]

Thanks for your help. I did a Reset with the Keep my files option. I was reluctant to do that because it always takes weeks to really get back to where I was but I did it and the machine is more responsive. Every time I do that I forget that MS doesn't automatically back up contacts so I lose them all and have to spend forever on the phone with MS support to try to find them and restore them as best we can. I don't know why MS doesn't see this as a major bug. I stand to lose 20 years worth of contacts and if I ran a business from this computer it could be truly disastrous to lose them.

Unfortunately it didn't seem to solve the rebooting problem. I did the reset on Sunday and now on Tuesday it has already done a spontaneous reboot. I think that all the signs point to getting a new computer sometime. This SP3 has been a lot of trouble.