I'm starting to think that the full update is the only way to fix things in reasonable time. There's a reason in the problems, for sure, but there are also too many options...

Have you tried with updating? I mean everything, including the kernel.

I have not done any updates to this machine and I am not sure how. My head IT guy left me and I am between having experts onhand.

Let's forget about updates for a short while (they're needed, but may break things more than they're already broken). Let's go back into the logs. Reboot the machine so the hanging effect occurs, then reboot back to the mode you have access to all the things. Then look into /var/log/auth.log. Can you find entries for you tries at the time it hanged?

Mara,

Sorry this has taken so long to re-post. I did as you suggested and have no /var/log/auth.log to review...

I will take a look onlin and see if I can easily see how to turn this tracking on...