he said his last restore point was just yesterday. from being in tech support, i notice that windows' restore feature is notoriously unreliable. previous restore points were probably somehow corrupted.

i would say just backup all your data (music, movies, bookmarks, email files), make note of all the programs and settings you use, and then recover your laptop to factory. then immediately reinstall all your programs and settings, migrate your data, and run all windows updates. now that you have your comp in an ideal and pristine state, make a backup of your system reserved and C partition/disk. i would recommend EaseUS todo's free backup program which is pretty powerful and easy to use, considering. plus it has a perfect track record with my less computer savvy clients, who i always recommend it to.

the reason i recommend such a drastic measure is because you dont know what the problems is, and considering your technical level and the fact you dont want to spend money for a tech to look at it, it may be too much of a headache to track the problem down. plus, this way you will always have a backup copy of your machine in a pristine state, and youll never have to do this much work again if windows needs to be reinstalled in the future.

if you dont want to do that much work right off the bat, i would have you run a full and thorough virus scan of your C partition. if you dont have virus software, use Avira's free offering. after that, also run malwarebytes which is also free.

oh yea, also make sure its not getting too hot. laptops are notorious for getting clogged with dust bunnies.