Eric,
Have you looked at your hard drive in File Explorer? And, if so, is it showing most of the drive in use? One program that I have found helpful is Glary Utilities. It has a number of system maintenance tools, including one to clean unnecessary files and folders. The program is free and can be found at
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/freeware.html. Just type Glary Utilities in the search bar on the upper right of the page.
"I just found out that Windows 10 apparently suffers from something affectionately known as "blue screen syndrome", when my laptop was just sitting doing a quick virus scan! "If you want to learn about what just happened to your computer research DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION." I saw enough to see that this problem has been around since at least Windows 8 and I can expect it to return, that it has something to do with video card Windows interaction! I hate Microsoft. Please no Get Yourself Apple etc. Anyone know of a patch?"
Rocky,
To give you a more precise answer, more information about the occurrence and your computer may be necessary. As a general matter though, outdated drivers are frequently a cause of this particular problem. If you have not done so it would be advisable to update your drivers. A program from iObit called
Driver Booster 3 does a reasonably good job of advising about outdated drivers and downloading/installing the latest drivers. There is a free version which can be found at the link that I provided. When installing the program (if you do) be careful at the installation. The program wants to install Advanced System Care as well and you need to uncheck box to avoid this install. Nothing wrong with Advanced System Care, which is a system maintenance program, I just happen to like Glary Utilities better. One thing, Driver Booster has an option to update all your outdated drivers with one click. My experience has been that this can sometimes overload the system, either causing a system freeze or shutdown. I would recommend updating any outdated drivers one by one.
As you can probably tell from my suggestion, I am a fan of free software! Good Luck with any fixes, and I hope this helps both of you.
If these solutions don't work for one or both of you, an alternative would be to let me "look" at your computer using remote computing. I use another program called TeamViewer, which is free for personal/non-commercial use. This would allow me to access your computer on a one time basis using a password that is generated by the program and see if I can find the/a problem. It would be done while in telephone contact, so we would have to exchange information and arrange a time when we were both available. Let me know if you want to give this a try if my general suggestions don't provide relief from your problem.
Jim