Background and icons refreshing constantly

Question

XPS  8910. Windows.10.  Two days ago the background and icons began refreshing every 30 seconds or so.  Most apps, such as Mail, Edge, Task Manager, etc stay open in the foreground and do not refresh when the background refreshes so I know it's not the display drivers or the monitor..  However, Outlook and Microsoft Explorer do not stay open and will close when the background refreshes.  In addition, when I try to restart Outlook it will either close on it's own or I'll get the error 'Cannot start Microsoft OUtlook.  Cannot open the Outlook window.  The set of folders cannot be opened.  The file C:\Users\.....\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\....cannot be opened.'  Other times it will open and then just close when the background screen refreshes. Thanks for any ideas on what's going on and how to get things back to normal?

Tesla1856 · Answer

Have you done a full scan with Defender ?

Does anything critical (red) show in Windows Reliability Report ?

Use Crystal DiskInfo on Passmark's SMART-checking utility to check your HDD/SSD SMART health status.

Windows General

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