My Aspire M with an I7 CPU and 6GB ram is running extremely slowly

SMBUNN

I have run latest updated MalwareBytes and Search&Destroy which found nothing.  Task manager shows nothing amiss and CPU at 2% usage most of the time.  But opening Chrome...2 minutes.  Launching MineCraft, 5 to 8 minutes.  I can no longer even think about running Fallout 4 or any of my other more intensive games.  Minecraft barely runs, by this I mean just rotating in one spot causes major stuttering of the video (and yes I confirmed it was using the Nvidia 640M)

I ran a computer hardware test program that said compared to over 400 other Aspire M laptops with the same hardware mine was running at 3% of the average speed for CPU and 12% of the average for the group for HDD access.
I ran optimiser on the HDD, which is only half full and it said that the disk was pretty defragmented even before it started.

Is there a chance my CPU has gotten cooked and is in some form of throttled mode?
I have bought an SSD and will image across the HDD tonight, but given the lousy CPU performance I think that is the true problem.