Weird PC/Windows 10 stuff happening; file history, freezing up, takes forever to shut down

I would suspect USB hardware and the drivers for it (which probably are not the same between your wife's PC and yours).
 
I had similar issues, but back in win7 when my DAW (offline) would take ages to shut down or just get stuck shutting down; I could never 100% trace it (thus not eliminate it) but very often it had happened after I had issues with the audio driver in Sonar, when it either crashed Sonar or made me manually close Sonar and go for a reboot ...
 
For me these "shutting down takes forever" issues have disappeared since win10 (which reinstalled all device drivers), but I have also swapped some USB hardware (MIDI and audio at about the same time)
 
I would try running the PC with only mouse and keyboard on USB, everything else (printers, cameras, external drivers, whatever) unplugged.

Thank you, both. We'll try those suggestions out today.
Michael

Thanks abacab.
She's doing that right now (other side of the house) and she did run Norton 360 full scan night before last.
So, now it's usb experiments...
Her NEC display is HDMI and she runs her Sony and Canon cameras through a recent usb3 hub with it's own PS. The Logictech mouse/qwerty are wifi, but she tried it with a plug in set too. The scanner is now unconnected....
 
Michael

Thanks
She has 3 hard drives like mine.  WD 1Tb for C and a pair of Seagate 2Tb for her pics (she's a pro photographer and painter in addition to music).  I'll remind her, though I think she'd just done a back up of C. I don't know if she has backed up the photos, but mostly likely she has.
Michael

Ironically, everything seems to be working fine this morning. Thanks for those links. I'll save/share them and post back if something should change.
     She did index her files Tuesday night and left the PC alone "cooking" that up. Yesterday she had intermittent issues/freezing, but none today.
     I'll post back once I find out what/how today goes.
Thanks again.
Michael

Good evening,
 
just in case, you can run a memtest and as you
own several PC perhaps PSU could be in cause.
 
Random faults are often consequence of bad stick of ram or PSU. 

Well, that seems clear. Thanks   32 Gb of G Skill can fail, too, I suppose.
We'll see what she wants to do next.
Thanks to all. It's all new to me, fortunately.
Michael

Now there's a solution that did not come to mind..... mine, anyway! LOL We had some ADATA but I think she sold it on eBAY, once we both got the G Skill.
It is a possible experiment, none the less.
Michael

Yes, indeed! LOL      Amongst my pals, that rings true and always gets enthusiastic confirmation!

Thanks for that bit of info, Tom.
"If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy......." I have a pal who seems to say that a lot..
Michael

Oops, there it is, it just appeared, the icon for new updates, that's what it was. MS doing it's own thing for hours and scaring an old man half to death. I'm still going to back up even tho I know I'm all backed up...

I just noticed today that a fresh version of the Win10 Anniversary Update version 1607 was lurking in my updates.  I have held off on that (hidden), still running the fall update from 2015, Win 10 version 1511.
 
I hid the update again, but it does leave me to wonder that if updates are allowed, and Microsoft re-issues an update does that mean it gets applied?
 
Bottom line, I wonder if your issues were temporarily related to an MS feature update that was running?

abacab
I just noticed today that a fresh version of the Win10 Anniversary Update version 1607 was lurking in my updates.  I have held off on that (hidden), still running the fall update from 2015, Win 10 version 1511.
 
I hid the update again, but it does leave me to wonder that if updates are allowed, and Microsoft re-issues an update does that mean it gets applied?
 
Bottom line, I wonder if your issues were temporarily related to an MS feature update that was running?

i haven't let windows 10 update since july, staying on 1511, mainly because i thought my audio interfaces may stop working (old, but good), but also because of reported issues etc, recently i was reading that you would only experience problems with hardware/drivers(unsigned) if it was a new install of anniversary update or later, and wouldn't affect an existing installation that was updated with unsigned drivers already installed etc, i hadn't realized that in the past. so after seeing the dust has mostly settled with issues people have been having with recent windows 10 updates my curiosity got the better of me, i let this laptop update 2 days ago, everything was fine, so i decided to make a backup image of my #2 daw, then let it update, all good, no problems, audio interface still works, just required a re authorization for a few plugins. so i then made a backup image of my #1 daw, let it update, again all good, audio interface all good (same as the one for #2 daw)no issues apart from the same need to re auth a few plugins. gave them a good going over, disabled the cortana stuff and a few things, seems as stable, fast and compatible as 1511, so i am happy with that, all machines are now happily on the latest 1607 . of course i have since disabled windows 10 updates again until if and when i decide to update again, maybe next year :)