Mostly to embolded of the problem: As you are planning changes in your "typical" setup, include ALWAYS working from a VM as "OS" machine 50-100GB (growable) .VHD easy to save and restore from a 8 TB external USB3 ?
Yes, Windoze restore often works -but hey, the problems are
a) when it does not
b) speed is abysmal, as multiple patches/updates are rechecked and fixed, clean file copy of total large vhd is better

>I disabled Windows 7 updates long time ago. So, even when it was supported by MS, I was not updating my PC. So, the update 2 weeks ago - probably - didn't play the role in my problem.
>
>Thank you for the link "Fixing the problem ..." I will carefully review it and see if I can follow it. I know I create Restore Point quite often. I will just need to find all my restore files and restore. I don't know if that would make a difference though.
>
>I plan to - eventually - "move" this new Windows 10. So, this problem may speed up the date of the move.