A strikingly random but apprently related group of issues on my Windows Laptop

[Roguebantha]

As a backstory, I recently bought this laptop new from HP, and for quite awhile, all was well and things worked fine...but some time during the end of August, things started to go a little haywire. A group of problems that seemed entirely unrelated from each other all popped up at once. These include:
Starting Google Chrome will create an instance of chrome.exe, but it will take nearly 10 minutes for the actual browser to appear. Firefox works fine.
Right clicking on files/folders in the File Explorer will cause Explorer.exe to hang (with a nice blue turning circle) with the only remedy being to restart explorer.
After entering my password to unlock my computer after putting it to sleep, the computer will sit at the "Welcome" screen seemingly forever. As in, won't ever go to the Desktop. Closing the laptop lid and reopening either doesn't fix anything or leads to an occurrence of the below issue.
Seemingly randomly, I will try and wake up the laptop after it has gone to sleep and it will not wake up. As in, I have clicked every button on the keyboard, clicked every button on my mouse and touchpad, opened and closed the laptop, and the screen remains stubbornly black. The fan will make noise and the Caps Lock button will light up along with the backlit keyboard, but there is otherwise no response. Clicking the Airplane Mode hotkey will occasionally but rarely wake up the computer. The only solution is to force the computer to shutdown using the Power button and restart.

My friend and I were able to temporarily fix all of the problems at once by reinstalling Google Chrome and cleaning out the registry. However, all the above problems have come back along with a mysterious appearance  inetpub directory at the root drive which I understand to be a component of IIS. However, IIS is turned off in the Programs and Features window...funnily enough, even though this folder is quite new, it has a creation date of April-2014-something...which is before this computer was even ASSEMBLED.

I am a computer science major, and have quite a bit of experience with computers and troubleshooting, but I have NEVER seen a group of problems quite like this before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated; laptop specs below:
HP 17t Envy Laptop
Intel i7-4510U
Nvidia GeForce GTX 850M
1 TB Hybrid Hard Drive
16 GB RAM
Beats Audio
Fingerprint Sensor

[Geek-9pm]

You may wish to look in the event log.

[Roguebantha]

I have done so, and noted a startling number of errors generated by "Bonjour Service" so I believe my next step will be to uninstall that. However, I am not convinced that it is the issue..I was wondering whether anyone had any better ideas.

The question was raised on the Google Support forums that one should make sure chrome is not blocked in Windows Firewall. However, clicking on Firewall in the Control Panel causes Control Panel to freeze...

[patio]

Bonjour' is an apple service addon and it likely is the cause of the issues...even if it seems they are deeper issues...
It's a pain to remove...but make sure you get it all and give us an update after...

[Roguebantha]

I did remove it and after a restart, the problems seem to have at least temporarily gone away. We'll see if it stays that way and I'll give an update a week or so from now if it worked, sooner if it doesn't 

[patio]

Fair enuff...Welcome Aboard !

[Roguebantha]

Aaaaaand it's back again...still not sure what's causing it but once again, Chrome takes 10 minutes to start up and once again, Control Panel hangs when I click on Windows Firewall, and once again, Windows explorer is hanging on right click. I'm not sure what's going wrong with it, but clearly, Bonjour service was not the culprit...any ideas?

[BC_Programmer]

It could be related to an Explorer Shell Extension. You can use ShellExView  to examine the Extensions installed. The best advice would be to simply uncheck any from third-party programs.

It may also be worth mentioning that programs like iTunes actually setup a scheduled task which will reinstall the service you removed if it is not found, and iTunes will install the service itself if it is disabled or deleted, So you might want to double-check that it is still disabled/uninstalled.

[Roguebantha]

SOOOOOOO, BC_Programmer, after reading your post and realizing how great an idea it was, I went to ShellExView and checked out all the shell extensions installed. Most of them were from Microsoft or Avast, BUT I noticed that for some reason, HP (which had installed 7-zip be default) had for whatever crackpot reason, installed 9.22 BETA on my machine!! I immediately switched it out for 9.20, and am about to reboot. We'll see if that fixes the problem and I'll check back in in a week to update the final verdict!!

[patio]

There were no Bonjour' or apple shell item remnants ? ?
What method did you use to remove it ? ?...cause it will re-spawn.

[Roguebantha]

Not that I discovered; I removed it straight through the Uninstaller in the control panel.

[patio]

See Here...

[Roguebantha]

Okay...I did follow the first piece of advice which is just to remove it via Control Panel. mDnsResponder is not running either. It's also not generating any errors in the event log anymore.

[patio]

I'd still follow that removal procedure...

[Roguebantha]

Okaaaaaaay....and after months of it coming on and off, the problems have returned, and this time, there are no simple errors in the event log to pin the blame on. Just mountains and mountains of info and the occasional warnings/errors that shouldn't be causing an issue. There are no processes or services running that look very suspicious and nothing installed that shouldn't be. Just stuff not working the way it's supposed to. A couple other issues I've hit that I think are related:

Fifa 15 will start, but will not appear on the screen or taskbar until I start the Windows Task Manager.
Attempting to restart will leave the computer hung at "Restarting..." forever until I use the big bad power button
The Windows Update service will not start: "The service did not respond to the request to start/control in a timely fashion."

This is getting really out of hand. I will be running a boot time scan with avast tonight to see if it picks up anything but I have my doubts. I have no indication that the problem is anything malicious. Just something is conflicting with something else or something stupid like that. It's something that fades in and out because restarting can fix it for awhile.

I have (in a demonstration of faith) attached lists of all of the Processes, Services, and Network connections present on my computer. Maybe something will ring a bell for someone.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm getting a little desperate, and to be honest, a little humbled. I've always considered myself a very proficient computer user and a hacker and yet this seemingly simple issue has entirely stumped me.

Absolutely dumbfounded....

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