Okay, so I see a great number of computer issues, and most of them I'm able to work through or recognize with general ease. Some of them I run past you good people here, such as this one:

I have a user with a fairly recent Dell laptop. The behavior it's exhibiting makes no sense to me, and I'll see if I can explain it. Essentially, the performance works like a coasting car. The car starts out at the top of a hill, the hits a flat stretch at the bottom where it slowly slows down and eventually stops.

That's exactly like what's happening with this computer. It starts out running just like a computer of its type should. I'm able to run applications, browse the web, etc. But no matter what program I'm running, eventually the laptop will start getting slow then eventually grind to an utter halt. Sometimes I'm able to restart the computer, but most of the time I'm left not being able to do any thing but move the mouse around.

This might help: the same thing happens when running chkdsk /r. Of sfc /scannow. In each case, it starts slowing then grinds to a halt.

What's the deal? Any potential suspects (besides being a Dell laptop, I mean)?