Ma'am I Am, how big is that SSD? If it's a minimal one — some HPs from the 9th-generation-processor era shipped with as little as 128Gb for a "home drive," expecting users to use the cloud — you may be having trouble with the paging file having to reallocate itself.
If the drive is as small as 128Gb, the solution is to add a secondary drive. Sorry, but 128Gb is too small for practical use. If you can't add a secondary drive, you can try clearing the paging file (see below), but don't increase the size of the paging file itself above the size of your memory (16Gb).
If the drive is at least 256Gb, you've got more options. The main one is to increase the size of the paging file to at least 32Gb (twice your installed memory); here's a clear explanation of how, and it's quite simple:
https://www.supportyourtech.com/tech...by-step-guide/
The second-level tweak is less obvious: Clear out junk from your Recycle Bin... and the paging file itself. Doing this fully and properly will slow down the shutdown sequence. It will modestly enhance system security, too. Here's a clear explanation of how, with three options:
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-t...ile-in-windows
Then reboot, preferably a cold boot (full power off).
As a general rule, no Windows machine that is connected to the internet should be allowed to run for more than a week to ten days without a reboot. This is a consequence of von Neumann pipelining, the stack structure, and some works-for-most-things-but-not-everything compromises in the processor itself (especially for an i7 with its 8 cores, with the requirement to allocate work among the cores). And it's not as much of a pain as in the days of Windows 95/98, when booting a machine took from 2-5 minutes…