@NetworkNorm Windows update is literally the best thing if you want to keep your computer stable! It won't be your drivers to be honest, it's more like something running in the background like a virus scan and yes, Norton and their ilk (my corporate laptop is horrendous for background stuff reducing it to an update machine).
I'd check things like your browser is updating successfully and same with other software that might be repeating downloads. Running Steam? Check that too. If you're on wireless, check if the network isn't congested in the area with neighbours wifi channels and also the internal network hasn't got other devices doing multiple updates.
Then you are into hardware - if you're on wireless and using a wireless dongle, slowness in my experience is down to a failing device - usb ports can overheat as can internal wifi cards. Cheap enough to replace though go for 5GHz versions rather than 2.4GHz. If on wired, check if the router isn't overloaded if using PoE as it might be at its limit. Router/switch might be failing due to power supply failure (had a few like that!) which seems fine after a reboot but it continues till you replace the power unit. And do try replacing the network cable with a better quality one - try a cat5e shielded one which should be marked FTP - see this link for the types. If you can, go for S/FTP cat6. Make sure its one with solid copper core not CCA (copper clad aluminium).
Depending on how old your computer's hard drive/ssd is, thats another sign of impending failure and easy to sort via Windows image backup/restore to a new drive.
Also: check your DNS settings on the pc network interface. That catches me out quite a few times. A reboot of the networking equipment might help too and you might want to check if the router logs too. If the router/switch log files aren't being rotated, then that is a probable cause across devices on the entire network as it consumes its own resources trying to compress/delete files reducing usability of the network its serving.
Or just accept windows is really unfit for purpose these days and move to Linux or Mac which I'm slowly doing whilst keeping a win10 machine for some things.
