The ghost was gone. She rendered her project in forty-five minutes, saved it, and closed her laptop.
Elara rebooted. The login screen appeared in two seconds. reduce ram usage windows 11
She also switched her power plan to "Best performance" (counter-intuitively, power-saver modes often compress RAM, causing stutter) and went into Advanced System Settings > Performance > Visual Effects. She un-checked "Transparency effects," "Animations," and "Taskbar animations." Windows became uglier but breathable . The ghost was gone