My main computer is a Dell laptop that I've had for a few years and it runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and has 8GB of RAM. It is model N7110 (I think).
A few days ago, my browser (Google Chrome) updated by itself somehow, even though I always have automatic updates turned off and did not initiate any updating with regards to that program, and it added some kind of button or something to the toolbar on the right side that I didn't want there and so I found out on Google search engine a way that the feature could be disabled and so I did that but after selecting to disable it, I did not close and restart the browser because I was still reading some articles and such and did not want to close them out so I figured I'd just restart the browser another time and so the feature remained there even though I had checked the box to disable it.
A few hours later, I was trying to transfer some photos from my tablet computer and had two folders open and my browser was still also open, as well as an MP3 playing on VLC Media Player and then the folders "stopped responding" after I tried dragging the photo files from the folder where they were on my tablet onto a folder on an external hard drive that was plugged into the USB port at that time. On occasion, dragging files from one folder to another seemed to trigger a "stopped responding" error with the folders and then they won't close out and I'm forced to try to shut them by using the Windows Task Manager. I tried doing that and then eventually the screen froze and everything stopped responding and so I had to shut the computer down by the power button. I've done that in the past and usually the computer works like normal when I reboot but I may be asked to go through Disk Check first.
I don't recall now exactly what happened but basically once I rebooted the computer, I tried resuming what I had been doing but then found that the computer would "stop responding" and freeze and the whole screen and mouse pointer would freeze and so I'd have to shut it down by the power button. I didn't understand what was going on but eventually I figured out that VLC Media Player and Google Chrome browser would no longer launch and if I tried to open them, they'd just immediately stop responding and then the whole computer would freeze up. I uninstalled the VLC Media Player and downloaded and installed the most recent version from their website. It launches and plays fine. However, I can not uninstall Google Chrome. I went into "Control Panel"/"Programs and Features" and selected the "uninstall" button and instead of beginning to uninstall the program, the computer started running really slowly and then every folder or program that was open "stopped responding" and froze and I had to shut down by the power button after trying to shut down the non-responding programs with Windows Task Manager and having even that freeze up. I think these problems all began with that unwanted update by Google Chrome and now the browser won't function and I can't even uninstall it. I have been trying to use Vivaldi browser on that computer for the past couple of days but I really don't like the style of it as compared with Google Chrome and it is much slower too. I'd rather use Chrome but can't get the issues on that laptop sorted so that I can use it without stuff "stop responding" eventually.
According to the "Programs and Features" menu, the computer has Google Chrome version 89.0.4389.114 installed and that says it was installed on April 2, 2021. However, I did not install my browser on that date and actually have been using it a few years on that laptop and did not recently install any new version. In Windows program folder there was folders as if there are two different versions of Chrome installed. The other folder seems to be for version 89.0.4389.90 of Chrome.
Sorry for the length but I wanted to include as much details as I could to help understand the issues.
