I have been having a problem for a while.  My DAW machine has decent specs, but there are some cases where it seems to perform very poorly.  For example, I can run projects which have a lot of CPU intensive plugins at moderate to low latency without problems.  On the other hand, sometimes I get the "spinning blue ring of wtf is taking so long" saving patches in certain programs or even instantiating plugins.
 
Any ideas?

I would start with a general checkup of your PC health.
 
Disk health.  A drive could be getting errors. >  https://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm
 
Memory test.  > https://www.memtest86.com/
 
Startup tasks and background processes.  These things can accumulate.  You can selectively shut them down with Autoruns by Microsoft Sysinternals >  https://docs.microsoft.co...als/downloads/autoruns
 
I also recently found an interesting utility from Resplendence, the developer of "LatencyMon", called "WhySoSlow". >
http://www.resplendence.com/whysoslow
 
It opens up with a live status page, but you can also click on the "Analyze" tab and get a detailed report.
 
 

If you see the spinner pop up when your browser is open, check for Malware.
 
Slow loading/saving could be caused by a slow drive.
 
Some plugins (HALion 6) tend to load slower than others.
My solution for this is to put the HALion 6 sample libraries on a M.2 Ultra (PCIe x4) SSD.

And at least put the system drive on a SATA SSD.  I put Windows, all applications, and all VST plugin .dll files on my SSD.
 
That has made a huge difference for me in the launch times for everything except samples.
 
So everything except plugins that load sample libraries open in a couple of seconds for me.  All my sample content is stored in a secondary SATA HDD at 7200rpm.  I'm sure upgrading that drive to SSD would make an improvement, but once the samples are loaded, everything runs fast again.

Yep, replace the (slow) 5400RPM conventional HD with a 2.5" SATA SSD.