This sounds like memory usage and or disk stuff might be the issue. On a normal day, I have a game dev software program, Paint.net, and Chrome opened with some YouTube video playing in the background for noise (and I'll be honest, I'm typically a tab hoarder and will have several tabs opened at once, I know that's a bad thing to do and just taxes everything, though I've been better about it here recently. But there's been times even with only 3 or 4 tabs opened this issue still happens, unless that's still too taxing), in addition to my preferred music software MuseScore, which I know for a fact is a memory hog. I'm very sporadic in my work flow, so I'm usually alternating between everything regularly, hence why I have so much stuff open. I do try and close software once I'm done using it, but inevitably I'll have all of it open at the same time at some point just because of how I work.
The only AV I have is the default Windows Defender.
As a test I've left it on the 70% prompt for 2 hours while doing other things around the house. Never budged and at that point I assumed it never would. Several other times I've attempted to wait it out, albeit not as long, but it seems like once it's stuck there it's stuck for good.
Out of curiosity, if it's a hard disk issue, what solutions would there be? Or is it time for a new machine altogether? I know this one is getting old and accept I'll be needing a new one soon, so I understand if this is just an issue that's not fixable, but I'm hoping there's a way to at least mitigate it to some degree.
Thanks for yall's answers, I've stuck by Paint.net for years now so I'd like to stick with it.
EDIT: Just wanted to add: At any given time I *always* have multiple files open in PDN because of the nature of what I use it for. The more I think of it the more I'm convinced yall are right and I'm pushing my hard disk, especially when I have some 6-7 larger-res files open.
