Exactly how does one load up msconfig?
To find your event logs you need to go to your event manager.
Go to Start -> Type in Event Viewer
In the upper left you will see Windows Logs and you can click that and see various Windows Logs such as applications, security etc…
One other thing I noticed you run AVG. Is AVG turned on for link scanner and email scanner. I found that when I run link scanner and email scanner AVG slows my computer to a crawl. This is because AVG is checking every link on every webpage first. I think that is overkill. So I disabled AVG for link checking and email checking and my computer runs normal.
Click on Start>Run and you should get a dialog box, type in msconfig.
For this as well as the removal of the option to exit the program easily I have stopped reccomending Avg. It is becoming just as bloated as many other options.
Likewise, AVG used to be good for a free AV but it has become bloated and has been surpassed in detection percentages by other free AVs.
@DocCathode follow Markxxx’s instructions for accessing the event log, look out for any errors (marked by a red and white ‘x’) relating to the disk or to applications failing/hanging.
To test your RAM the best option is to use memtest86 ( http://www.memtest.org/ ), it will download as a .iso file which you will need to burn to a CD and then boot from the CD. A good way to stress test your RAM is to use prime95 and select the option to test a blend of CPU and RAM. This will put your CPU and RAM under 100% load for as long as the test runs and can show up faults that otherwise take hours of PC usage to appear.
I find that AVG itself frequently runs long processes that hog most of the CPU.