Problem SOLVED. For me, it turns out that Malwarebytes AM and/or Malwarebytes AE were the problem. My two machines started having strange issues right after I installed these programs. Apparently, some kind of conflict was happening between Malwarebytes and something else. I suspect MSE. I was also experiencing boot problems where my machines would hang during boot up. Anyway, once I uninstalled all Malwarebyte products, both of my machines became real happy again.
