HTC M9 Nougat Issues

Have had my HTC M9 since June 2015, and no problems with it what so ever, but ever since I updated to the new Nougat a week ago my phone has been acting up. It seems to be running sluggish. Apps open really slowly, even swiping the screen to the next home page lags tremendously. So much so that the phone goes all black and restarts itself. After the restart an error report is sent to HTC and the problems subside for abit, but then the entire cycle starts up again. I read online that a hard reset would help solve this problem, but I dont want to do that unless I have tried all other options. Please help, I love this phone!