Most application will ask for confirmation before update, otherwise there is no easy way to know which applications have been updated, as far as I know.
You may try to:
- Boot in "safe mode" and check it the performance issues persist. If the computers works fine, then it could be a software related issue, so next step:
- Open Task manager, go to the Startup tab and try disabling the programs that start automatically,
- One option to determine if it is software related is to restore the computer to a previous restore point
If you are sure there is no malaware/virus and nothing solved the issue, you should not discard hardware / device failure, then:
- Back up all your files
- Check disk (including surface test)
- Check Ram