I assume you’re suggesting borrowing a PC which is running Windows 10 64bit with at least 8Gb RAM, Brian?
However, to be a meaningful test the borrowed computer would need to be the exact same specs because if the friend’s computer was more powerful than the OP’s Lenovo laptop, the outcome would be quite misleading.
To be clear, Windows 8.1 is OK, Windows 10 is better.
Well, Steve and Brian, I have one tech savvy friend but he’s a diehard Mac user and despises Windows. Another friend lives a bit far away from me.
But I’ve complained about my computer’s speed before, so I think the RAM upgrade will certainly help, and not just with Shotcut.
All advice is much appreciated. Thank you both!
Shotcut is available for Mac OS as well. Though my caveat still applies.
I added 4 GB RAM. The store clerk said going up to 16 might not make a big difference if the CPU was actually the problem. I couldn’t afford 16 GB RAM anyway. Not now.
The upgrade seems to have helped a little. I was able to put together a V1 timeline without any trouble and even added a audio track. But when I started adding still frames as a V2 that’s when the no response and crashing began again. I finally finished the video but couldn’t export it. It reached 21% only. I tried a shorter video with no extra video track (i.e. V1 only and made stills part of V1) and two added short music clips to an A1 track and though exporting was slow (about 30 minutes for an eight-minute video) it was completed without failure. It’s on YouTube now and is fine. So maybe I just have to go with no additional video track and fit any stills into the V1 track.
Two things I am going to try: When I want to keep my narration but show a still photo image, I’ll try copying the audio track from the video to an A1 track and then deleting the V1 segment from where I copied the audio track, and then adding in a silent still photo V1 clip with the copied audio track in A1. Also I’ll try exporting shorter videos first and then putting them into a playlist and exporting the playlist. Maybe I’ll have time in a week or so.
Upgrading to Windows 10 is not easy at the moment. Not for me. My key has expired. I’m on Windows 7 pro right now, I realized. Maybe just moving up to 64-bit processing is the most important move next, whether it be W8 or W10…?
One piece of general advice for people using images:
Consider resizing your images to match your video size before adding them to your Shotcut project. For example, if your Shotcut project is using “HD 1080p 30”, then the video size is 1920x1080. For each image you want to use, open it in an image editor (MSPaint will work) and resize it to 1920x1080. Then import it into Shotcut. Doing this saves Shotcut a lot of memory utilization and CPU processing because it does not have to resize the image itself.
That’s good advice about the size. I was automatically resizing to 1000 x 800 because that’s what I do to upload photos on Flickr. But that size is smaller than the video size so it doesn’t cover the whole video and edges of the video show.
You are using 32Bit so you cannot ADD 4Gb RAM, only 2Gb (MAXIMUM is 4Gb on 32bit Windows OS)
Genuine Windows licenses don’t expire.
The free upgrade to Windows 10 ended July 29, 2016
When you buy a new license, make sure it’s Windows 10. There is no point in considering W8.1
Absolutely, I’ve mentioned a number of times that you should prepare your assets before adding them to a video editing project. I recall one person considering my advice as some form of insanity 
Agreed. In addition, if your hardware can support 64bit, then make sure you get Windows 10 64bit.
The OP is using a Lenovo ThinkPad E550 (Core™ i5-5200U) which are shipped with 64bit Windows 8 (not 32bit).
It might be first worth checking that the factory reset partition is still available (Press/hold F11 immediatey after power up) and restoring the original OS.
Of course the OP will need to backup all his important files to an external drive first.