Photoshop using too much memory, freezing computer

Question

Over the past month Photoshop has become a nightmare to work with.
I am using CS6 because I have never been able to get CC to install. My computer specs:
Lenova Thinkpad
i7-3632 CPU with 16 Gb ram running Win 7 Pro x64. The graphics card is the Intel HD Graphics 4000.
I have used Photoshop since 1996, so am a seasoned user. These problems began about 1 month ago and I suspect may be related to the fact that one of the 2 CC memberships associated with my account was about to expire. (I wonder if there is something internal increasing checks of licensing given the upcoming and now passed expiration.) It also may be related to whatever underlying problem makes it impossible for me to update Photoshop CS6 or install Photoshop CC from the creative cloud. I have tried suggested solutions and short of uninstalling/reinstalling everything nothing has worked.
What I noticed first was that PS would take a long time to open, affecting other programs during the process. Music playing in iTunes would "skip" like an old record, with several pauses in the music while PS opened or saved a file.
When I checked the task manager, PS was almost 1Gb ram to view a single jpg. It seems like PS is not releasing memory when images are closed. For example, I just had 3 files open and closed all but a 56Kb jpb - yet PS is still using 1.142 Gb of ram. If I close PS and reopen those files, I see a more expected ram usage.
The problems are not consistent, which is odd. For example, opening PS will be okay one time and open in seconds, then it will take minutes another time and freeze my computer. (Which is why I suspected it may be connected to a CC license check routine.)
The biggest problem is that PS is also causing problems with other programs, esp. Microsoft office programs - that only occur when PS is running.
Does anyone have any idea of why this is suddenly a problem and what I can do to fix it? I am literally at the point of looking for and switching to another program if I can't get this fixed.
Thanks - Julie

Answer 1

Thank JJMack - that has helped me get closer to the problem.
I opened the resource monitor and you can see a screenshot of what is going on when I try to save a simple, 9 Kb graphic. (I'm saving an RGB JPG, not a PNG or animated GIF file. Doing anything complex / memory intensive than saving or simple edits in PS is almost impossible.)
As you can see from the screencap below, when I save (it doesn't make a difference if it is save vs. save to web or a network or local drive) Photoshop becomes unresponsive. (From past experiences, if I try to switch to a non-Adobe program it will also freeze and sometimes crash.) When PS becomes unresponsive, the NT Kernel & System immediately goes to the top of the list and uses 200+ threads.
From there Photoshop will typically be frozen for about a minute, then will recover and take another minute or two to finish the save. At that point PS is okay, but the rest of the computer is still frozen with CPU oscillating up to almost 100%.
As soon as the NT Kernel & System settles down, everything is back to normal again (as long as I haven't used other programs, which in one case required a hard reboot.)
It is pretty clear the problem is rooted in Adobe / Window 7 as I only have this problem with Adobe programs. (Illustrator isn't as bad, but I've had problems with it as well.)
The question is: How do I fix this, as it is killing my ability to work?
Thanks! Julie