My original monerod.exe would not open for more than a second before closing. I could see no reason, so after many attempts, I backed up the blockchain that I had, (behind by a week) and started downloading the chain from scratch, letting it run overnight.
As it closed in on the last 120,000 blocks, it slowed considerably, and has now stopped.
I believe that I set the log level at two before that last forced update, but I cannot find any log file that seems useful.